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THE  WHITE  MAN'S   WORK  IN 
ASIA   AND   AFRICA 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


MODERN  CONSTITUTIONS  IN  OUTLINE 

AN  INTRODUCTORY  STUDY  IN  POLITICAL  SCIENCE 
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STOIC   AND  CHRISTIAN    IN    THE   SECOND   CENTURY 

A  COMPARISON  OF  THE  ETHICAL  TEACHING  OF  MARCUS  AURELIUS 

WITH  THAT  OF   CONTEMPORARY  AND  ANTECEDENT  CHRISTIANITY 

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LONGMANS,      GREEN,      AND     CO. 

LONDON,   NEW  YORK,   BOMBAY,   AND  CALCUTTA 


THE 

WHITE    MAN'S   WORK 

IN 

ASIA  AND  AFRICA 


A   DISCUSSION   OF  THE   MAIN   DIFFICULTIES   OF 
THE   COLOUR   QUESTION 


BY 

LEONARD   ALSTON,  M.A. 

AUTHOR  OF 
"STOIC  AND  CHRISTIAN  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY,"  ETC. 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO, 

39    PATERNOSTER    ROW,    LONDON 

NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1907 

All  rights  reserved 


' 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

THIS  little  work  is  substantially  that  which 
gained  the  Maitland  Prize  at  Cambridge  in 
1906.  Academic  essays  dealing  with  imperial 
topics  are  not  unnaturally  suspect ;  and  I  may 
therefore  be  pardoned  for  stating  here  that  the 
greater  part  of  my  life  has  been  lived  in  the 
British  dominions  over  seas,  and  that  my  interest 
in  the  problems  discussed  is  not  by  any  means 
merely  the  offspring  of  the  library  and  the  mid- 
night lamp.  The  subject  dealt  with  is  so  vast 
that  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  insert  an  apology 
for  the  attempt  to  handle  many  aspects  of  it 
within  the  narrow  compass  of  a  single  volume. 
No  book  could  be  lengthy  enough  to  treat  it 
adequately ;  and  no  essay  on  the  subject,  how- 
ever brief,  could  be  published  without  bringing 
on  its  adventurous  author  the  charge  of  stepping, 
in  some  places,  beyond  the  limits  of  what  he  is 
competent  to  treat. 

CHRIST'S  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE, 
May,  1907. 


165070 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER    I 

INTRODUCTORY 

§  I.  The  importance  of  the  problems  to  be  treated.  §  2.  Nature 
of  the  difference  between  advanced  and  backward  races — is 
it  a  difference  of  degree  or  of  kind  ?  §  3.  Difficulty  of  form- 
ing just  standards  of  comparison.  §  4.  Provisionally,  optim- 
ism with  regard  to  the  possibility  of  progress  remains  a  duty. 
§  5.  This  duty  is  unaffected  by  the  disproof  of  the  possibility 
of  acquired  characteristics  being  inherited  .  pages  I-i8 

CHAPTER   II 

CHRISTIAN   ETHICS  AND   PHILOSOPHY  IN   RELATION  TO 
THE   LOWER   RACES 

§  6.  Racial  or  national  ideals  and  national  practice  must  not  be 
confused  together  in  the  discussion,  though  they  are  necessarily 
inter-related.  §  7.  The  need  of  sympathy  in  learning  from 
or  teaching  alien  races.  §  8.  The  necessity  also  of  careful 
analysis  of  the  essential  elements  in  Christianity.  §  9.  The 
practical  character  of  most  forms  of  moral  training  is  a 
hindrance  to  the  sympathetic  comprehension  of  alien  ideals. 
§  10.  Yet  such  sympathetic  comprehension  is  essential  for 
satisfactory  dealing  with  aliens.  §  II.  Provisional  necessity 
of  assuming  the  relative  superiority  of  Christian  over  non- 
Christian  ideals,  especially  as  the  former  admit  freely  of 
continuous  evolution.  §  12.  The  Western  ideal  is  that  of 
the  "full"  life,  involving  honour  to  the  prudential  virtues 


viii          WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

(which  are  foolishly  disparaged  by  upholders  of  a  crudely 
conceived  Christianity).  §13.  The  politician  tends  towards 
the  contrary  extreme  of  overestimating  these  virtues.  §  14. 
The  undogmatic  exposition  of  an  evolving  ideal  may  be  diffi- 
cult, and  its  effectiveness  is  not  amenable  to  statistical  com- 
putation ;  but  its  influence  is  evidenced  by  such  signs  as  the 
reactionary  formation  of  purified  non-Christian  sects  in  India. 
§15.  The  essential  duty  of  the  believer  in  Western  ideals  is 
that  of  avoiding  offensive  propagandism  while  persistently 
* '  witnessing  "  on  behalf  of  those  ideals.  §  16.  The  apparent 
slowness  of  the  advance  of  Western  ideals  is  due  to  the 
complex  nature  of  the  task  in  front  of  the  Western 
reformer  .....  pages  19-66 


CHAPTER   III 

ADMINISTRATIVE  DIFFICULTIES   IN   RELATION  TO   THE 
TASK   OF   REFORMATION 

§  17.  The  European  view  of  life  requires  for  its  development  a 
new  environment  to  be  created  mainly  by  the  formation  of 
new  institutions.  §  18.  Existing  social  institutions  which 
are  apparently  of  a  harmful  nature  must  be  dealt  with 
cautiously,  as  they  are  bound  to  have  had  some  good  ground 
for  their  appearance,  and  social  disturbances  necessarily  in- 
volve considerable  evil.  §  19.  Transitional  evils,  though 
looming  large  in  the  eyes  of  statesmen  and  local  residents, 
must  not  outweigh  unmistakable  future  gains.  This  con- 
sideration renders  unsatisfactory  the  application  of  hedonistic 
criteria  in  calculating  the  amount  of  benefit  involved  in  any 
particular  policy.  §  20.  One  important  transitional  evil  is 
the  liability  of  the  more  advanced  race  to  be  demoralised  by 
contact  with  the  less  advanced.  §  21.  The  latter  also  may 
be  disheartened  by  the  sense  of  inferiority  and  generally 
suffers  much  injustice  at  the  hands  of  neighbouring  whites, 
unless  these  are  firmly  controlled  by  a  disinterested  govern- 
ment. It  is  just,  however,  to  admit  that  colonial  dealings 
with  aliens,  while  apparently  harsh,  may  have  a  sub-conscious 
justification  in  considerations  relating  to  the  future  distribu- 
tion of  the  world's  population  .  .  pages  67-92 


CONTENTS  ix 

CHAPTER   IV 

ECONOMIC  AND  POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS 

22.  Discussion  of  quasi-economic  problems  resulting  from  the 
irregularity  of  the  growth  of  populations  in  relation  to  the 
growth  of  economic  opportunities,  and  from  the  clash  of 
higher  and  lower  standards  of  life.  §  23.  Similarity  of  race 
problems  to  the  class  problems  arising  within  the  nation — 
Man  is  (a)  a  wealth-producing  machine,  (b)  a  member  of  the 
animal  kingdom,  (c)  a  moral  agent ;  and  members  of  alien 
races  must  be  considered  in  all  three  aspects.  §  24.  Some 
thinkers  regret  the  impossibility  of  evading  difficulties  by  the 
complete  segregation  of  race  from  race.  But  it  is  doubtful 
whether  this  would  subserve  the  higher  gain  of  either  the 
more  advanced  or  the  less  advanced.  The  same  thing  may 
be  said  of  the  policy  of  gradual  displacement.  §  25.  The 
maintenance  of  the  European's  higher  ideals  does  not  in- 
volve the  necessity  of  maintaining  the  white  man's  political 
hegemony.  \  26.  Administrative  problems  are  largely  due 
to  commercial  considerations  and  the  habit  of  looking  on  the 
dark  races  as  mere  means  to  the  production  of  wealth.  §  27. 
The  dangers  always  connected  with  advances  in  a  demo- 
cratic direction  reappear  in  the  schooling  of  the  lower  races, 
and  make  difficult  the  decision  of  questions  as  to  the  proper 
limits  of  intervention  by  the  higher.  §  28.  In  nearly  all 
these  matters  the  purely  administrative  problems  are  closely 
paralleled  by  ethico-religious  problems  .  .  pages  93-136 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  WORK 
IN  ASIA  AND  AFRICA 


CHAPTER    I 

INTRODUCTORY 

»  'TTVO  attack  a  vast  group  of  problems  affect- 
1  ing  intimately  the  future  welfare  of  all 
the  peoples  of  the  globe,  and  to  deal  with  them 
in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  even  a  very  moderate 
impression  of  adequacy  in  the  minds  of  a  con- 
tracted circle  of  sympathetic  readers,  demands  an 
intellectual  equipment  of  no  mean  order.  From 
time  to  time  such  a  feat  may  be  achieved.  But 
the  more  complete  the  satisfaction  given  within 
the  limited  circle,  the  more  probable  it  is  that  the 
solutions  proposed  —  however  cautiously  and  ten- 
tatively put  forth  —  will  be  rejected,  outside  the 
special  circle,  as  overlooking  elements  vital  to  the 
well-being  of  great  masses  of  the  world's  popula- 
tion. Our  sympathy  is  inadequate  to  the  task. 
Our  broadest-minded  Utopians  fail  to  make  the 
foundations  of  their  world-schemes  wide  enough, 


2  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

or  strong  enough,  to  bear  the  weight  of  the  super- 
structures. With  patient  introspection,  aided  by 
industrious  comparison  of  such  ideals  as  we  can 
comprehend,  we  may  attempt  to  map  out  the 
essential  characteristics  of  human  nature,  and  plan 
to  satisfy  what  we  conceive  to  be  its  legitimate 
demands.  But  the  ideals  of  mankind  are  too 
many-sided  for  it  to  be  possible  for  a  single  race 
to  complete,  even  in  imagination,  the  desired 
edifice.  The  individualism  which  will  alone  satisfy 
one  people  is  rejected  as  reckless  anarchy  by 
another.  The  speculative  mysticism  of  a  nation 
of  idealists  is  repudiated  and  ridiculed  as  some- 
thing feeble  and  unpractical  by  a  more  earthy, 
more  strenuous  stock  ;  and  the  energetic  activity 
which  the  latter  applauds  is  stigmatised  by  the 
more  placid  type  as  sordid  utilitarianism  and  greed 
of  material  gain.  Life  without  progress  is  a  re- 
pulsive "living  death"  in  the  eyes  of  certain 
sections  of  humanity,  while  the  feverish  vivacity 
of  these  merely  irritates  their  opposites  or  arouses 
in  them  a  deep-seated  antipathy. 

Yet  for  all  that,  the  problems  connected  with 
the  adjustment  of  relations  between  race  and  race 
must  be  taken  up  and  reconsidered  from  genera- 
tion to  generation.  Even  while  we  recognise  and 
deplore  our  incompetency  to  deal  with  them,  we 
are  prevented  by  the  far-reaching  importance  of 
the  issues  at  stake  from  passing  them  over  in 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

indolent  silence.  However  willing  we  may  be  to 
restrict  our  outlook  to  domestic  matters,  we  shall 
continue  to  find  that  problems  of  world-politics — 
the  intercourse  of  white  and  yellow  and  black,  the 
impact  of  Christian  propagandism  upon  oriental 
seclusiveness,  the  influence  of  Moslem  misrule 
upon  commercial  security,  the  consequences  to  in- 
ternational trade  of  servile  labour — questions  of  the 
future  relative  weight  of  higher  and  lower  races, 
of  the  ultimate  success  of  civilised  ideals,  of  the 
world's  peace  and  the  world's  progress,  will  force 
themselves  on  our  attention  in  spite  of  our  desire 
to  narrow  our  sphere  of  duties  and  devote  our- 
selves exclusively  to  our  own  special  affairs. 
With  the  progress  of  science,  and  the  continuous 
improvements  in  the  ease  and  rapidity  of  inter- 
communication and  migration,  we  find  the  world 
shrinking  year  by  year  into  a  smaller  and  ever 
smaller  workshop  for  our  expanding  activities. 
The  internal  affairs  of  each  country  react  on  the 
interests  of  all  others,  and  we  can  seldom  now 
j/  afford  to  ignore  any  great  national  movement  on 
/I  the  plea  that  it  is  a  domestic  matter  which  only  a 
jf  single  nation  has  any  right  to  discuss. 

And  not  only  must  we  bring  up  such  problems 
for  periodical  discussion.  Even  while  we  are  dis- 
cussing, and  before  we  have  had  time  to  frame 
comprehensive  plans,  circumstances  force  us  into 
action.  It  is  in  vain  that  earnest  lovers  of  the 


4  WHITE    MAN'S   WORK  IN    ASIA 

backward  races  asseverate  that  no  nation,  however 
superior,  is  competent  to  take  charge  of  its  neigh- 
bours' future.  Events  have  shown  with  irresistible 
logic  that  it  is  with  certain  nations — our  own  and 
others  more  or  less  akin — that  in  the  main  the 
schooling  of  the  lower  races  must  lie.  In  their 
own  interests  the  North  European  peoples  must 
take  up  this  task  in  the  ever-narrowing  circle  of 
lands.  For  our  children's  children's  sake  we  must 
see  that  as  far  as  in  us  lies  we  shall  so  play  our 
part  that  the  world  that  they  will  inherit  may  be  a 
cleaner  and  more  wholesome  world  than  the  world 
that  now  is.  It  is  not  in  our  power  to  rest  content 
in  the  midst  of  the  countless  hordes  of  lower 
beings,  steeped  in  foul  and  degrading  ideas  of 
what  man  is  and  ought  to  be.  For  contentment 
in  such  matters  means  atrophy.  We  cannot  grow 
while  the  bulk  of  the  human  race  is  stationary. 
Either  we  and  they  must  advance  together,  or  we 
must  be  content  to  forget  the  idea  of  progress 
altogether. 

§  2.  We  are  confronted  at  the  outset  with  two 
alternatives.  Either  the  present  inferiority  which 
we  perceive  in  the  lowest  branches  of  the  human 
race  is  nothing  but  the  result  of  the  long-con- 
tinued action  of  differing  environments,  and  may 
therefore  (now  that  differing  environments  are 
with  the  progress  of  a  ubiquitous  civilisation  be- 
coming but  a  single  environment  common  to  all 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

mankind)  be  confidently  expected,  if  not  to  dis- 
appear, at  least  to  diminish  indefinitely,  with  the 
passage  of  centuries ;  or  else  between  Negro  and 
European  there  yawns  a  chasm  similar  in  char- 
acter (though  not  in  degree)  to  that  which  divides 
us  from  the  brute  creation  ;  the  lower  types  of 
mankind  differing  radically  from  our  own  and 
kindred  stocks  in  such  a  way  that  it  will  never  be 
possible  to  raise  them  to  a  level  with  ourselves. 

The  anthropologist  can  as  yet  offer  no  positive 
pronouncement  on  this  point.  He  has  drawn 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  children  of  barbarian 
parents  brought  up  in  a  civilised  environment, 
while  remarkably  quick  in  acquiring  the  rudi- 
ments of  civilisation,  generally  reach,  at  an  early 
stage,  a  limit  beyond  which  they  seem  unable  to 
proceed.  He  can  point  also  to  peculiarities,  such 
as  the  early  closing  of  the  sutures  of  the  negro's 
skull,  as  indicative  of  greater  differences  than 
were  admitted  by  the  anti-slavery  sentimentalists 
of  a  few  years  ago.  And  in  general  the  weight 
of  his  opinion  seems  to  favour  the  pessimistic 
theory. 

But  the  comparatively  slight  advance  made  by  a 
few  experimentally  treated  children  can  scarcely 
be  considered  overwhelming  evidence  against  the 
optimistic  view,  when,  as  evidence  in  the  contrary 
direction,  we  can  point  to  occasional  instances  of 
great  intellectual  power  developed  in  favouring 


6  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

circumstances.1  Nor  can  we  ignore  the  fact  that 
coloured  races,  Indian  and  African,  have  in 
recent  centuries,  and  under  the  stimulus  of  contact 
with  Europe,  made  perceptible  progress. 

Yet  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  philosophic  his- 
torian has  any  large  contribution  to  offer  tending 
towards  another  solution  of  our  problem.  For 
while  the  recent  progress  of  these  coloured  races 
cannot  but  be  admitted,  it  may  prove  that  the 
limits  to  their  possible  progress  lie  but  a  very 
little  way  ahead.  Could  the  historian  supply  us 
with  a  perfect  picture  of  our  barbaric  ancestors — 
giving  us,  for  instance,  the  psychological  details 
which  we  miss  in  the  brief  sketches  of  Caesar 
and  Tacitus — we  should  have  some  useful  material 
to  go  upon.  Still  better,  if  he  could  let  us  know 
through  how  many  centuries  those  rugged  Teutons 
remained  in  a  state  of  stagnation  prior  to  their 
stepping  within  the  circle  of  light  that  radiated 
from  the  South.  Such  significant  data  for  com- 
parison we  cannot  immediately  obtain.  We  ask 
questions,  to  which,  indeed,  we  are  frequently 
offered  answers,  but  answers  such  as  we  can 
only  partly  trust.  Are  the  Negroes  of  to-day 
morally  inferior  to  the  tribesmen  against  whom 

1  Unless  it  be  the  case  that  these  exceptional  instances  can  all 
be  explained  away  by  the  hypothesis  of  the  presence  of  some 
slight  admixture  of  European  or  Mongolian  blood.  It  is  often 
confidently  asserted  that  no  pure-blooded  Negro  has  ever  shown 
any  real  intellectual  power. 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

Agricola  warred  in  North  Britain,  or  who  followed 
Alaric  and  Theodoric  to  the  spoil  of  a  decaying 
civilisation?  Are  the  Indians  and  Chinese  of  to- 
day at  all  below  the  level  of  the  peasants  who 
dwelt  under  the  shadow  of  feudal  institutions  and 
a  priest-ridden  Church  in  the  ignorance  and 
gloom  of  the  Dark  Ages?  Given  adequate  an- 
swers to  such  questions  as  these,  we  could  look 
forward  to  the  future  with  less  uncertainty,  and 
frame  our  policy,  educative  and  administrative, 
with  surer  wisdom  than  is  now  possible. 

But  the  data  are  lacking.  Subjective  impres- 
sions and  local  prejudices  usurp  as  yet  the  place 
of  authoritative  judgments. 

Individual  observers  have  seldom  the  width  of 
experience  which  would  qualify  them  to  speak  of 
more  than  a  single  people,  and  official  information 
lacks  that  quality  of  sympathetic  insight  which 
could  alone  render  it  of  real  service  in  solving 
our  problems.  Glancing  through  volume  after 
volume  from  the  diligent  pens  of  travellers, 
missionaries,  anthropologists,  and  administrators, 
we  find  each  new  opinion  cancelling  that  which 
preceded  it ;  and  it  is  with  scant  success  that  we 
seek  to  eliminate  the  writer's  personal  bias,  and 
to  get  the  right  scale  by  which  to  measure  the 
claims  of  optimism  or  despair.  Now  it  is  a 
missionary,  more  eager  than  befits  true  wisdom, 
exaggerating  the  evils  of  barbaric  life,  and  forget- 


8  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

ful,  in  his  long  and  weary  exile,  of  any  aspects  of 
European  life  except  the  noblest — a  forgetfulness 
that  vitiates  his  most  cautious  statements.  Now 
it  is  a  responsible  official,  proud  of  the  reforms 
which  he  and  his  " department"  have  achieved, 
and  prone,  not  unnaturally,  to  speak  as  if  the 
advancing  native  had  already  come  near  to  at- 
taining the  standard  set  before  him.  Again  it  is 
some  lonely  explorer,  rejoicing  at  some  unanti- 
cipated escape  from  suffering,  which  showed  him 
that  the  black  man  was  not  in  his  case  as  black 
as  he  believed  him,  who  insists  on  our  seeing 
what  he  has  seen  through  the  friendliest  of  friendly 
eyes.  Then  it  is  some  dealer  in  literary  sensations 
seeking  material  for  a  lurid  picture  of  the  horrors 
of  an  unexplored  land  of  darkness. 

Whose  opinion  can  we  follow  with  least  reserva- 
tion? 

And  what  standards  shall  we  take  when  we 
measure  the  European  against  the  non-European 
world  ? 

§  3.  A  few  broad  lines  of  distinction  we  may 
draw  at  the  outset.  The  chief  peoples  of  the 
Chinese  Empire,  if  not  in  all  respects  on  a  level 
with  ourselves,  have  at  least  built  up  a  stable 
civilisation,  and  formed  well-thought-out  systems 
of  philosophy  and  admirable  moral  codes.  The 
Japanese  we  can  scarcely  place  below  ourselves. 
In  India  we  meet  with  a  subtle-minded  industrial 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

population,  the  incongruous  nature  of  whose 
actions  and  ideas  is  the  despair  of  all  observers. 
We  cannot  but  admit  the  remarkable  intellectual 
powers  of  the  ablest  among  them  (which  may,  of 
course,  be  due  to  the  " Aryan"  strain  that  has 
filtered  down  through  generation  after  generation 
of  this  pS^^  Aryan-tongued  group  of  nations),  nor 
can  we  easily  deny  the  presence  of  some  real  moral 
earnestness  in  the  intense  asceticism  of  thousands 
of  self-torturing  fakirs,  and  in  the  deep  admiration 
which  their  conduct  everywhere  inspires.  With 
regard  to  the  future  of  these  three  groups  of 
Asiatic  peoples,  as  also  of  the  Persians  and  the 
Arabs — creators  of  noble  religious  systems  which 
only  ignorance  can  despise — it  would  seem  that 
pessimism  would  be  out  of  the  question.  Yet, 
strange  as  it  may  appear  at  first  sight,  those 
whose  life-work  has  brought  them  into  intimate 
relations  with  lower-class  Hindus  have  been  al- 
most more  prone  to  pessimism,  than  those  whose 
dealings  have  been  chiefly  with  the  African  Negro ; 
and  that  in  spite  of  the  comparative  mental  and 
moral  infertility  of  the  latter. 

The  worker  in  India  quickly  becomes  downcast 
on  realising  his  inability  to  penetrate  below  the 
surface.  He  feels  about  him  the  all-pervading 
influence  of  caste  and  custom,1  benumbing  every 

1  One  of  the  chief  points  to  which  trained  observation  needs  to  be 
steadily  directed,  in  the  case  of  these  Asiatic  civilisations,  would 
seem  to  be  the  comparative  ethical  value  of  the  communal  system 


io  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN  ASIA 

effort  at  reform.  The  relatively  advanced  stage  of 
the  civilisation  already  attained,  and  the  pride  of 
the  people  in  the  antiquity  of  their  religious  tradi- 
tion, thrust  more  obvious  obstacles  in  his  path  than 
do  the  comparatively  fluid  tribal  conditions  of 
Africa.  The  very  rigidity  of  the  social  framework, 
while  preserving  the  Indian  from  retrogression, 
seems  to  many  observers  to  diminish  his  chances 
of  progress,  so  that  his  outlook  appears  darker 
than  that  of  the  primitive  undisciplined  native  of 
Central  and  Southern  Africa.  Whether  this  is 
really  the  case  or  no  is  a  question  which  can 
hardly  be  answered  on  the  strength  of  individual 
judgments.  Such  a  happy  combination  of  official 
and  unofficial  methods  of  inquiry  as  would  yield  a 
trustworthy  result  has  not  yet  been  attempted  ; 
and  until  the  attempt  has  been  made  we  must  be 
content  to  forego  the  right  to  deal  freely  in 
generalisations. 

Moreover,  comparison  of  the  civilisations  of 
East  and  West  only  too  frequently  takes  the  form 
of  setting  over  against  one  another  the  very 

as  a  means  not  only  of  conserving  but  of  advancing  personal 
morality.  Both  in  India  and  China  caste  regulations,  or  the  claims 
of  the  family,  seem  to  take  the  place  of  a  broadly  based  system  of 
morals.  To  what  extent  such  traditional  restraints  on  the  indi- 
vidual are  hindrances  to  further  development,  and  to  what  extent 
they  may  be  claimed  as  indispensable  buttresses  of  the  existing 
civilisation,  are  subjects  for  philosophic  scrutiny,  requiring  a 
patient  gathering  of  evidence  which  has  never  yet  been  seriously 
attempted. 


INTRODUCTORY  n 

highest  that  the  West  can  offer  at  the  present 
moment,  and  some  average  example  of  what  the 
Orient  can  show.  Thus  the  outward  appearance 
of  Brussels  or  Brighton  in  the  year  1900  is 
contrasted  with  that  of  Port  Said,  Benares,  or 
Peking.  Yet  if  we  stepped  back  no  more  than  a 
century  there  would  be  no  great  gap  dividing 
these  and  those.  "The  West,"  which  we  are  for 
ever  mentally  comparing  with  the  East,  means 
almost  invariably  the  qualities  and  the  institutions 
which  have  come  into  being  in  the  last  century  or 
half-century.  We  forget  the  sudden  bound  for- 
ward made  in  that  short  period  by  the  forces 
favouring  public  morality,  decency,  and  order. 
We  unconsciously  assume  that  things  were  always 
as  they  are ;  and  we  explicitly  declare  that  China, 
having  made  no  progress  for  centuries — an  as- 
sertion that  could  perhaps  be  made  with  equal 
accuracy  of  feudal  Europe — never  will  progress 
(though  the  sudden  rise  of  Japan  has  somewhat 
modified  of  late  our  contemptuous  certainty). 
Weaknesses  pointed  to  as  evidence  of  chasms  that 
can  never  be  bridged  may  often  be  paralleled  among 
the  more  backward  of  our  own  village  classes, 
or  among  the  masses  of  our  nation  in  medieval 
or  more  primitive  times.  Thus,  for  example,  Sir 
H.  H.  Johnston,  mentioning  a  case  of  belief  in 
witchcraft  which  made  its  appearance  in  a  Chris- 
tianised community  of  Central  Africa,  speaks  as 


12  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

if  such  beliefs  were  absolutely  incompatible  with 
Christianity,  and  almost  concludes  from  their 
existence  that  negro  Christianity  must  be  a  sham.1 
Yet  it  was  but  yesterday  that  a  denial  of  the  truth 
of  witchcraft,  and  of  the  interference  of  devils  in 
the  lives  of  men,  would,  even  in  England,  have 
come  near  to  bring  upon  the  denier  the  stigma 
of  heresy. 

And  not  only  may  we  forget  the  changes  in  the 
ideals  of  our  more  articulate  classes  brought  about 
in  the  course  of  a  few  centuries;  we  are  liable  also 
to  ignore  the  fact  that  most  of  us  know  very  little 
of  the  practical  morality  of  the  mass  of  our  work- 
ing class.  "The  more  one  sees  of  the  poor  in 
their  own  homes  "  (writes  Miss  Loane,  The  Next 
Street  but  One,  p.  106)  "the  more  one  becomes 
convinced  that  their  ethical  views,  taken  as  a 
whole,  can  be  more  justly  described  as  different 
from  those  of  the  upper  classes  than  as  better 
or  worse."  In  so  far  as  this  estimate  is  true, 
it  means  that  our  comparisons  are  for  the  most 
part  vitiated  at  the  outset  by  the  acceptance  of  a 
non-representative  standard — which  is  especially 
misleading  when  we  are  contrasting  with  our- 
selves a  nation  like  the  Indian  within  which 
classes  intermediate  between  an  unimportant 
aristocracy  and  the  enormous  proletariat  are 
practically  non-existent. 

1  The  Nineteenth  Century,  Vol.  XXII. 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

§  4.  Every  particle  of  evidence,  favourable  or 
unfavourable,  ought,  no  doubt,  to  be  weighed 
without  bias  by  those  whose  training  enables 
them  to  do  so  with  profit ;  and  until  unanimity  on 
the  point  has  been  reached  by  qualified  observers, 
the  question  of  the  educability  of  backward  races 
must  not  be  prejudged  in  the  interest  of  any 
religion  or  religious  philosophy. 

But  though  in  the  study  we  do  well  to  re- 
member that  the  optimistic  alternative  remains 
"  not  proven,"  and  count  it  folly  to  blind  our- 
selves there  to  a  single  relevant  fact,  nevertheless, 
as  long  as  science  leaves  to  us  the  least  opening 
for  continuing  to  hope,  hope  remains,  for  those 
whose  part  it  is  to  act  rather  than  to  study,  a 
paramount  duty.  If  the  possibility  of  a  backward 
nation's  advance  is  conceivable,  we  cannot  afford 
to  diminish,  by  any  scepticism  in  practice,  the 
inspiring  force  of  optimism,  in  us  and  in  them, 
from  which  alone  the  advance  can  come.  Only 
if  the  proof  of  a  people's  inherent  incapacity  to 
rise  in  the  scale  stood  beyond  reach  of  all  question 
and  criticism,  could  we  justifiably  make  accept- 
ance of  the  belief  the  basis  of  a  set  policy,  or 
treat  with  ridicule  the  generous  labours  of  those 
devoted  spirits  that  continue  to  hope  in  the 
transforming  influence  of  Western  morality  and 
religion. 

In   the   handling  of  certain  problems  there  is 


14  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN    ASIA 

what  must  be  called  (though  the  phrase  may 
appear  strange  to  some)  a  duty  of  optimism. 
Hope,  and  the  joy  that  goes  with  confident  hope, 
are  such  powerful  driving  forces  in  the  world  of 
ethical  progress  that  neither  in  our  individual 
lives  nor  in  our  national  aims  can  we  win  our  way 
forward  without  them.  The  individual,  hesitating 
between  this  course  and  that,  lingering  in  thought 
over  every  obstacle,  balancing  the  good  and  the 
evil,  weighing,  sifting,  rejecting,  needs  to  let  in 
upon  his  reasoning  the  full  light  of  day  in  order 
that  he  may  see  his  path  before  him  clear  of 
the  confusing  shadows  cast  by  indolent  selfish- 
ness or  by  false  confidence  based  on  ignorance. 
But,  once  committed  to  the  course  he  has  chosen, 
the  experienced  worker  takes  care  to  sweep  out 
of  sight  everything  that  may  damp  his  ardour 
and  contract  his  energies,  as  he  strides  forward 
with  his  eyes  on  the  far-off  goal,  remembering 
nothing  that  has  power  to  dishearten  or  may  tempt 
him  to  waver. 

So  it  should  be  with  our  racial  duties.  As  yet 
neither  historical  observation  nor  scientific  laying 
bare  of  physiological  divergences  can  pronounce, 
in  the  authoritative  tones  that  carry  conviction, 
as  to  which  of  our  two  alternatives  is  in  accord- 
ance with  the  facts.  It  may  be  that  all  mankind 
share  in  our  wondrous  capacity  for  progress  with- 
out end ;  or  it  may  be  that  nature  has  fixed 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

rigid  unchangeable  limits  to  the  backward  races' 
advance.  Meanwhile  we  cannot  postpone  action. 
It  is  our  reasonable  duty  therefore,  as  far  as  in 
us  lies,  so  to  plan  out  our  general  policy,  that, 
whichever  theory  be  true,  we  shall  have  wrought 
in  our  day  and  generation  as  little  mischief  as 
possible.  With  the  charity  that  hopeth  all  things 
we  must  go  forward  on  our  self-imposed  mission 
of  elevating  all  that  can  be  elevated  ;  with  the 
inflexibility  of  ultimate  guardians  of  the  earth 
and  all  the  fulness  thereof  we  must  restrain  and 
govern,  checking  greed  and  lust  and  violence, 
making  for  civilising  influences  the  rough  places 
smooth  and  the  crooked  ways  straight,  and  never 
permitting  righteous  action  to  be  counteracted  by 
weak  sentimentality. 

§  5.  It  is  impossible  to  leave  this  topic  without 
some  reference,  however  cursory,  to  the  vexed 
question  of  the  inheritance  of  acquired  qualities — 
a  question  which  at  first  sight  would  seem  to 
be  of  paramount  interest  in  a  discussion  deal- 
ing with  the  propagation  of  enlightening  ideas 
among  the  less  enlightened  races.  Mr.  R.  H. 
Lock  closes  his  admirable  summary  of  recent 
scientific  progress  in  the  study  of  evolution  with 
a  few  indignant  pages,  disparaging  the  permanent 
value  of  educational  work  among  the  lower  classes. 
As  Mr.  Lock  would  doubtless  consider  his  re- 
marks equally  applicable  to  work  among  the  lower 


16  WHITE    MAN'S   WORK    IN    ASIA 

races,  it  will  be  convenient  to  quote  a  passage. 
"The  principles  of  heredity,"  he  writes,  "teach 
us  that  education  and  training,  however  beneficial 
they  may  be  to  individuals,  have  no  material  effect 
upon  the  stock  itself.  If  they  have  any  effect  at 
all,  this  is  undoubtedly  unimportant  in  comparison 
with  the  effect  which  would  be  produced  by  the 
selection  of  individuals  which  exhibit  desirable 
qualities.  The  demand  for  a  higher  birth-rate 
ought  to  apply  strictly  to  desirables.  Instead  of 
this  the  cry  is  for  education  and  physical  training, 
processes  which  can  have  no  permanent  beneficial 
effect  upon  the  race."1  Mr.  Lock  enforces  his 
views  by  quotations  from  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's 
Man  and  Superman  (p.  xxm).  "The  bubble  of 
heredity  has  been  pricked,  the  certainty  that 
acquirements  are  negligible  as  elements  in 
practical  heredity  has  demolished  the  hopes 
of  the  educationists.  .  .  .  We  must  either 
breed  political  capacity  or  be  ruined  by  demo- 
cracy. ..." 

At  first  sight  the  position  taken  up  by  such 
reasoners  is  undoubtedly  strong.  But  a  little 
closer  consideration  will  show  that  the  argument 
needs  much  qualification.  The  educated  parent 
and  the  physically  well-developed  parent  set  a 
higher  value  on  intellectual  and  physical  efficiency 
than  do  the  untrained  masses.  Their  children  are 

1   Variation^  Heredity,  and  Evolution,  p.  288. 


INTRODUCTORY  17 

influenced,  consciously  and  unconsciously,  from 
infancy  onward,  by  their  parents'  precepts  and 
their  parents'  example.  They  develop  in  a  better 
intellectual  and  moral  atmosphere.  They  acquire 
a  saner  view  of  the  requirements  of  a  humane  life. 
And  though,  when  they  in  turn  become  parents, 
their  children  do  not  inherit  through  the  physical 
organism  the  qualities  thus  acquired,  the  cumula- 
tive effect  is  not  less  real  and  lasting  than  would 
have  been  the  case  if  the  acquisitions  of  education 
were  directly  transmissible  while  each  generation 
grew  up  in  isolation  from  the  earlier  generation. 
Indeed,  this  course  of  progression  is  so  clear  and 
certain  that  the  possible  gains  from  selective 
breeding  appear  exceedingly  hypothetical  when 
set  alongside  of  it.  Borrowing  the  biologist's 
language,  we  may  describe  the  case  as  one  of  pro- 
gressive modification  of  the  environment,  each 
generation  being  brought,  during  its  most  sus- 
ceptible age,  into  progressively  more  stimulating 
surroundings ;  and  though,  if  a  child  of  our  own 
race  and  times  were  separated  at  birth  from  its 
parents,  and  by  some  miraculous  process  reared 
in  absolute  solitude  in  a  Robinson  Crusoe  islet, 
all  the  consequences  of  centuries  of  education 
would  be  seen  to  be  negligible,  and  the  progress 
be  triumphantly  declared  illusory,  none  the  less  it 
remains  true  that  under  normal  conditions  the 
progress  is  as  real,  rapid,  and  effective  as  if  the 
c 


i8  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

Lamarckian  theory  of  use  inheritance  stood  beyond 
challenge.  The  conditions  governing  the  trans- 
mission of  moral  qualities  are  only  in  part  the 
same  as  those  governing  the  inheritance  of  physical 
qualities. 


CHAPTER   II 

CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY  IN  RELATION 
TO  THE   LOWER   RACES 

P6  T)RELIMINARY,  however,  to  the  ques- 
L  tion  of  how  we  shall  bring  our  higher 
ideals  to  influence  the  thought  and  practice  of 
Asia  and  Africa  is  the  more  fundamental  con- 
sideration— In  what  does  the  superiority  of  those 
ideals  essentially  consist?  In  what  respects  do 
they  differ  from  the  ideals  of  the  other  two 
continents?1 

It  is  almost  a  platitude  to  point  out  that  in 
drawing  such  comparisons  it  is  necessary  to  avoid 
confusing  differences  of  average  conduct  and 
practice  with  differences  of  ideals.  Thus  the  mis- 
sionary, working  in  a  land  where  even  the  people's 
vices  are  new  and  strange  to  him  (and  therefore 
doubly  abhorrent),  and  coming  gradually  to  forget 
the  evils  of  English  lower-class  city  life,  tends 
to  contrast  an  idealised  Christendom  and  the 
highest  teaching  of  Christianity  with  the  vile- 

1  Theological  considerations  have  been  subordinated  as  far  as 
possible  in  the  treatment  of  this  and  similar  questions. 

19 


20  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

ness  of  the  darkened  lives  around  him  ;  while  an 
author  like  Mr.  H.  Fielding  Hall,  presenting  a 
more  or  less  idyllic  view  of  Burmese  character, 
with  frequent  reference  to  the  august  teachings  of 
the  Buddha,  sets  over  against  these  the  faulty 
practices  of  the  West.  Such  authors  miss  their 
aim ;  for  the  reader  cannot  but  feel  that  the  com- 
parisons are  faulty  and  misleading. 

But  we  must  guard  equally  against  the  opposite 
extreme  of  treatment.  Ethical  theory  and  ethical 
practice  cannot  be  cut  asunder  as  though  they 
were  unrelated  things,  least  of  all  where  national 
ideals  and  national  conduct  are  concerned.  If 
there  appears  on  the  surface  some  unresolved  in- 
consistency which  cannot  be  dismissed  as  insigni- 
ficant or  transitory,  either  the  ideals  have  been 
fundamentally  misstated  or  the  conduct  has  been 
misinterpreted.  There  can  be  no  wide  and  abiding 
discrepancy. 

Yet  on  the  surface  there  is,  in  the  case  of 
European  practice  and  religious  theory,  a  wide 
discrepancy,  such  as  has  exposed  us  to  the 
mockery  of  the  more  fiery  of  our  own  reforming 
spirits — our  Ruskins  and  Carlyles,  to  mention  only 
the  greatest  names — and,  at  the  same  time,  rouses 
distrust  and  scorn  among  our  Oriental  observers. 
In  the  Westerner's  character  there  are  certain 
underlying  tendencies  which  are  liable  to  appear 
in  their  most  repulsive  crudity  in  the  actions  of 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      21 

the  gain-seeking  man  of  commerce;  and  it  is 
in  Eastern  lands  that  persons  of  this  type  give 
expression  to  them  most  openly  and  cynically, 
feeling  themselves  emancipated  there  from  the 
repressive  influences  of  a  partially  Christianised 
environment.  Now,  it  is  the  trader  and  the 
missionary  of  whom  (apart  from  officials  and 
military  men)  the  Oriental  has  the  opportunity  of 
seeing  most.  And  the  more  subtly  acute  minds 
of  Asia  are  quick  to  feel  the  inconsistency  between 
the  ideal  as  it  is  usually  enunciated  by  the  preacher 
and  nominally  accepted  by  the  merchant,  on  the 
one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  those  sub-conscious 
forces  which  in  fact  govern  the  actions  of  the 
Western  world  as  a  whole.  Even  in  the  mis- 
sionary, when  it  comes  to  questions  of  practical 
policy,  they  observe  signs  of  his  being  at  heart 
inclined  to  accept  a  robuster,  less  idealistic  code 
than  he  officially  upholds.  Only  rarely  is  his 
conception  of  the  duty  of  man  so  carefully  formu- 
lated as  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  principles  on 
which  his  life  is  lived. 

We  have  here  an  inconsistency  which  for  the 
most  part  escapes  the  notice  of  the  Christian 
West;  or  at  the  best  is  explained  as  a  mere  falling 
short,  in  practice,  from  our  theoretical  ideal.  No 
explanation  could  be  more  flimsy.  It  is  a  pro- 
found, deeply  based  inconsistency,  which  will 
not  disappear  till  the  more  earnest  of  Western 


22  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

thinkers  have  restated  the  ideals  of  Christianity 
in  such  a  way  as  to  make  the  statements  at  once 
acceptable  to  the  national  conscience  and  true  to 
what  is  best  in  the  principles  of  Western  action. 
The  ill-formulated  ideals  of  a  defective  Chris- 
tianity, and  the  distorted  practice  resulting  from 
a  latent  consciousness  that  the  ideals  are  "  im- 
practicable," are  equally  the  causes  of  the  un- 
happy discrepancy.  The  ethical  views  must  be 
reformulated  in  the  light  of  our  own  practice 
(which  after  all  cannot  be  widely  at  variance  with 
our  ideals — seeing  that  they  that  hunger  and  thirst 
after  any  quality  are  assured  of  attaining  it),  and 
the  practice  will  have  to  be  modified  and  purified 
till  it  accords  with  a  theory  that  is  no  longer 
fundamentally  at  variance  with  the  Western  man's 
view  of  his  work  in  the  world. 

If  we  proceed  with  this  task  with  any  measure 
of  success,  the  alien  minds  whose  various  attitudes 
of  hostility  or  of  mockery,  of  ironical  contempt  or 
of  disgust  at  our  "  hypocrisy,"  have  forced  us  to 
a  reconsideration  of  our  position,  and  a  fuller 
analysis  of  our  principles,  will  have  performed 
for  us  no  slight  service. 

What  is  needed  is  a  clear  conception  of  what 
we,  the  higher  races,  are  aiming  at ;  what  it  is 
that  we  stand  for.  Our  deeper  thinkers,  and  our 
spiritually -minded  religious  leaders,  have  no 
doubt  formulated,  more  or  less  to  their  own  satis- 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY       23 

faction,   the   principles  according  to  which  their 
individual   lives  are   to   be   regulated.      But  the 
various  formulae  clash,  and  none  of  them,  perhaps, 
is  an  adequate  expression  of  what  we  may  call  the 
racial   instinct   in   matters   of  right  and    wrong. 
None  of  them  gives  a  satisfactory  explanation  of 
how  and  why  the  Western  peoples  act  as  they  do, 
and  play  the  part  which  they  are  playing  in  con- 
temporary  history.      The   moralist  has   his  own 
scheme  of  life  for  which  he  endeavours  to  find 
acceptance  among  the  members  of  his  own  race ; 
and  if  he  is  also  a  missionary  he  will  endeavour  to 
impose  similar  moral  teaching  on  the  people  he  is 
evangelising.     But  he  will  probably  (without  in- 
tending to  mislead)  put  it  forward  as  containing 
the  core  of  Christian  doctrine,  and  as  being  the 
accepted  code  of  Christian  lands.     If  his  code  is 
a  high  one,  and  his  life  strictly  governed  by  it, 
his  teaching  will  be  no  doubt  beneficial — in  the 
same  way  as  it  would  have  been,  had  his  work 
been  done  among  the  lowest  classes  of  his  own 
nation — but    the    influence    of   personal    idiosyn- 
crasies tends  to  produce  a  confusion  of  ideas  in 
the  minds  of  those  whom  he  seeks  to  win  over. 

Indeed,  every  teacher  who  calls  himself  Christian 
has  a  natural  tendency  to  name  everything  that 
he  approves  "  Christian,"  without  regard  to  the 
question  whether  his  own  ideals  do  or  do  not  coin- 
cide with  the  ideals  either  of  contemporary  or  of 


24  WHITE    MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

primitive  Christianity.  The  very  claim  of  Chris- 
tianity to  be  the  one  exclusively  true  religion, 
containing  the  sole  set  of  infallible  ethical  prin- 
ciples, makes  it  logically  possible  to  pass  in  either 
direction,  from  the  declaration  that  something  is 
admittedly  part  of  Christianity  to  the  declaration 
that  it  ought  to  be,  and  is,  above  criticism,  or 
from  the  assertion  that  something  is  demonstrably 
admirable  to  the  assertion  that  it  must  therefore  be 
an  integral  part  of  Christianity.  The  former  line  of 
argument  may  be  used  to  justify  religious  per- 
secution ;  while  the  latter  with  its  phrases  about 
the  "anima  naturaliter  Christiana"  disarms  the 
dialectical  opponent  of  Christianity  by  declaring 
him  to  be  not  an  enemy,  but  a  friend  who  has 
mistaken  his  uniform.1 

Unfortunately  the  factors  superficially  most  in 
evidence  in  the  progress  of  the  Western  world  are 
principles  diametrically  opposed  to  the  professed 
ethics  of  East  and  West  alike.  Repulsive  self- 
assertion,  reliance  on  material  force,  the  exaltation 
of  mere  wealth,  the  disappearance  of  all  self- 
respecting  serenity  in  a  "cupidinous  ravishment 

1  As  an  instance  of  a  similar  tendency  among  adherents  of 
other  religions,  may  be  quoted  the  words  of  a  Hindu  writer,  who 
says  of  Rammohan  Roy  (the  founder  of  Brahmoism)  that  he  u  had 
no  intention  of  denouncing  Christianity,  for,  like  all  true  believers 
in  the  one  universal  religion  of  God,  he  saw  true  Hinduism  in  the 
pure,  simple,  yet  grand  teachings  of  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  " 
(B.  C.  Mahtab,  Studies,  p.  15). 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      25 

of  the  future,"  the  all-pervading  ambition  not  of 
filling  more  completely  the  place  in  which  each 
man  is  set  by  birth  and  circumstance,  but  of 
climbing  by  any  and  every  means  into  some  other 
which  shall  be  more  lucrative — these  are  probably 
the  characteristics  which  the  thoughtful  East 
associates  more  especially  with  the  civilisation  of 
Europe.1  The  good  qualities  of  which  they  are 
the  evil  exaggerations  either  escape  notice  or  are 
looked  upon  as  fortuitous  accompaniments  of  the 
repulsive  traits,  like  the  courage  that  goes  with 
the  lion's  ferocity.  The  strenuous  self-devotion 
which  yet  recognises  a  prime  duty  in  self-develop- 
ment ;  the  unrelaxing  prudence  that  sees  life  as  a 
whole  and  concerns  itself  with  sagacious  provision 
for  future  needs ;  the  respect  for  purposeful  in- 
dustry— all  of  them  qualities  that  easily  pass  into 
forms  which  merit  condemnation — are  scarcely 
seen  by  the  Oriental  amid  the  fantastic  complex- 
ity of  Western  life  ;  while — in  the  case  of  the 
Hindu,  if  not  of  others — the  benumbing  influence 
of  pantheistic  views  of  the  world  and  a  super- 
subtle  metaphysic,  combined  with  the  experience 
of  centuries  of  a  stagnant  civilisation,  prevent 
him  from  adopting  either  the  stern  view  of  per- 
sonal duty,  or  the  confident  hope  in  the  practic- 
ability of  moral  progress,  which  are  essential 
elements  in  the  Christian  attitude  towards  life. 

1  Cf.  Mr.  G.  Lowes  Dickinson's  Letters  from  John  Chinaman. 


26  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

Had  the  Oriental  mind  a  native  tendency  to 
honour  the  same  virtues  as  we,  it  would  already 
have  attained  at  least  an  equal  share  in  their 
possession.  The  East  has  sought  after  other 
things.  Nor  is  it  likely  to  alter  its  scale  of 
ultimate  values  as  the  result  of  a  first  hasty 
observation  of  European  wares.  The  Western 
ideals  require  to  be  both  clearly  formulated  and 
perseveringly  upheld  in  the  lives  of  those 
Westerners  with  whom  the  Orientals  come  most 
into  contact,  and  observable  also  as  the  underlying 
postulates  and  assumptions  of  Western  literature 
and  national  activity,  before  there  is  a  probability 
of  their  being  even  partially  accepted.  We  must 
set  our  own  house  in  order — as  well  by  reformu- 
lating the  principles  on  which  we  act,  as  by 
reforming  the  manner  of  our  action — before  the 
Western  theory  of  life  can  become  even  a  can- 
didate for  the  control  of  moral  action  in  the  East. 

§  7.  How  then  shall  we  formulate  our  racial 
duty  in  the  present,  the  duty  of  acting  in  such 
ways  that  the  world  of  the  future  may  be  ever 
more  like  that  kingdom  of  heaven  into  which  it 
should  be  our  earnest  desire  to  transform  it?  And 
in  so  far  as  our  purpose  demands  giving,  what 
part  more  especially  of  our  Teutonised  Christi- 
anity shall  we  chiefly  seek  to  impart  to  the  less 
developed  nations — the  distinctively  Teutonic,  or 
the  distinctively  Christian  elements? 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      27 

But  our  programme  does  not  necessarily  limit 
itself  to  giving.  It  is  we  ourselves  who  wish  to 
grow,  and  in  growing  to  receive  everything  of 
good  that  the  peoples  of  other  continents  can 
bring  to  us.  For  whether  we  look  back  along 
our  Teutonic  line  of  ancestry  to  the  worshippers 
of  the  gods  of  a  vanished  Valhalla,  and  say 
that  we  learned  and  gained  by  absorbing  what 
Roman,  Greek,  and  Hebrew  knew  better  than  we  ; 
or  back,  instead,  along  the  line  of  our  more 
spiritual  ancestry,  and  say  that  Christianity  gained 
and  learned  from  each  strong  stock  with  which 
successively  it  came  in  contact ;  in  either  case  we 
cannot  complacently  turn  indifferent  eyes  away 
from  the  alien  races  and  all  their  works,  declaring 
dogmatically  that  we  have  nothing  further  to 
receive  from  these. 

Contact  with  our  less  developed  kindred  is 
already  revivifying  our  sciences  and  our  philo- 
sophy, and  giving  us,  through  the  study  of 
comparative  religion  and  of  anthropology  gener- 
ally, a  clearer  insight  into  our  own  mental 
characteristics  and  religious  psychology.  Nor  is 
it  only  through  the  reflex  action  of  wider  and 
truer  scientific  knowledge  of  peoples  in  whom  we 
believe  are  reproduced  the  characteristics  of  the 
infancy  of  our  own  stock,  that  we  may  expect  our 
ethical  conceptions  to  be  enriched  and  expanded. 
It  is  not  lightly  to  be  forgotten  that  the  spirit  of 


28  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

the  East  is  in  many  ways  more  akin  than  our 
own  to  the  spirit  of  primitive  Christianity.  And 
though  we  may  not  desire  definitely  to  retrace 
our  steps  to  the  extent  of  placing  ourselves  on 
the  same  level  with  our  spiritual  forefathers,  we 
may  yet  a  second  time  discover  that  we  have 
something  to  learn1  from  the  patient  submissive- 
ness  and  passivity  of  an  Oriental  world  that 
despises  our  fretful  activity ;  while  from  the 
furthest  of  Eastern  peoples  we  may  have  still 
to  study  how  to  improve  on  our  slipshod  applica- 
tion of  our  own  cherished  ideals,  remodelling  our 
conceptions  of  strenuous  endeavour  in  the  light 
of  the  lessons  taught  us  by  Japanese  military 
triumphs,  and  gaining  perchance  new  light,  like- 
wise, on  the  moral  function  of  the  cult  of  beauty, 
as  we  observe  the  tranquil  serenity  of  Japanese 
stoicism.2 

1  "  Every  nation  has  its  contribution  of  moral  qualities  to  give 
to  the  Catholic  Church.  I  am  persuaded  that  the  view  which 
makes  the  Greek,  Latin, 'and  Gothic  races  to  have  exhausted  all 
that  is  of  essential  importance  to  the  rehabilitation  of  humanity  is 
a  profound  error.  I  believe  that  the  Hindoo,  for  instance,  has 
many  noble  qualities  ;  lofty  idealism ;  singular  strength  of  self-- 
devotion ;  marvellous  power  of  endurance ;  along  with  natural 
aptitude  for  many  of  the  gentler  virtues,  as  meekness,  tenderness, 
delicacy — virtues  which  we  may  not  rank  very  highly,  but  on 
which  our  Saviour  has  stamped  His  indelible  approbation  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount"  (Dr.  Kay,  quoted  in  Frere's  Indian 
Missions,  p.  82). 

*  Cf.  the  editor's  article  in  the  Hibbert  Journal,  October,  1905, 
dealing  with  Japan  ;  and  Mr.  P.  C.  Moxom's  in  the  North  American 
Review,  August,  1906,  "The  Trial  of  Christianity." 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      29 

By  patient  observation  and  careful  comparison 
we  may  hope  to  gain  clearer  conceptions  as 
to  what  is  essential  in  our  ethical  ideals,  and 
continue  in  the  future  that  process  by  which 
Christianity  has  evolved  in  the  past — remodel- 
ling, rejecting,  or  preserving  the  multiform  con- 
tributions of  diverse  ethical  environments.  It  is 
important  for  our  own  philosophic  growth  to 
discover  how  far  existing  forms  of  Protestant 
Christianity  are  ethnic,  and  how  far  potentially 
universal  expressions  of  the  spiritual  needs  of 
humanity.  If  the  religious  outlook  which  we 
urge  the  Oriental  to  substitute  for  his  own  is 
persistently  rejected  by  him,  it  must  be  that  we 
have  offered  him  something  which  is  not  un- 
qualifiedly universal  in  its  application,  but  tainted 
with  the  admixture  of  non-essential  racial  ele- 
ments ;  and  these  elements  it  may  repay  us, 
spiritually,  to  isolate  and  analyse. 

By  the  painstaking  study  of  the  working  of 
Eastern  minds  upon  the  ideals  that  are  set  before 
them,  we  may  yet  learn  much  as  to  the  many- 
sidedness  of  human  nature,  and  in  doing  so,  may 
further  the  evolution  of  our  own  religious  views. 
As  the  Teutonic  mind  rejected  such  elements  in 
primitive  Christianity  as  the  Oriental  glorifica- 
tion of  celibacy — a  moral  bias  very  noticeable  in 
Apostolic  and  early  post-Apostolic  thought — so 
we  may  find  that  the  Oriental  in  his  turn  will 


30  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN    ASIA 

reject,  and  not  without  reason,  elements  which  we 
believed  essential  to  a  developed  Christianity. 

§  8.  Such  study  is  our  privilege.  Our  duty  as 
teachers  is  less  simply  formulated.  The  Christian 
must  ask  himself  whether  it  should  be  our  prime 
aim  to  give  back  to  the  Orient  a  Christianity  as 
like  the  Christianity  of  early  days  as  possible ; 
eliminating  deliberately  all  that  is  late,  Northern, 
Teutonic,  in  the  hope  that  therein  it  will  find 
what  is  fully  congenial  to  its  own  spirit ;  or 
whether  we  should  rather  hold  insistently  before 
the  mind  of  Asia  all  our  ideals,  laying  stress  on 
what  is  modern  and  savouring  of  Teutonic  in- 
dividualism, paying  little  regard  to  what  is  or 
is  not  distinctively  Christian,  and  allowing  the 
pupil-nations  to  absorb  what  they  will,  and  reject 
what  seems  to  them  unworthy. 

The  attempt  to  spread  everywhere  distinctively 
European  ideas  is  what  appeals  most  directly  to 
the  unreflecting  mind  as  a  noble  and  a  satisfy- 
ing task.  And  there  is  much  to  be  said  in  favour 
of  such  a  policy ;  though  if  undertaken  in  a 
parochially  proselytising  spirit  it  is  likely  to  lead 
to  disappointment  and  impatience.  For  it  is 
easy  to  drift  into  the  habit  of  thinking  that 
everything  must  be  good  per  se  which  is  good 
for  us;  and  also,  in  looking  back  on  the  past, 
to  assume  that  what  there  is  of  good  in  us  and 
ours  is  in  no  way  the  product  of  circumstance, 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      31 

but  due  entirely  to  inherent  superiorities  in  our 
racial  character  which  the  subject  peoples  would 
do  well  to  admire  and  humbly  aim  at  copying. 
Sir  H.  H.  Johnston,  a  far-sighted  and  thought- 
ful critic  of  missions,  puts  this  view  of  racial 
superiority  very  strikingly.  "Like  many  others" 
(he  writes,  Fortnightly  Review,  April,  1889),  "I 
am  disposed  to  think  that  had  Charles  Martel  not 
conquered  at  Poictiers,  and  the  Saracen  force 
had  crossed  our  Channel  and  added  Great  Britain 
to  the  Mohammedan  Empire;  had  the  Quran  been 
expounded  from  Oxford  and  our  ancestors  been 
forcibly  converted  to  the  tenets  of  Islam  as  they 
were  framed  in  the  eighth  century,  the  result  in 
the  nineteenth  century  would  not  have  greatly 
differed  from  the  existing  social  condition  and 
development  of  society.  The  Mohammedanism 
of  Britain  would  have  been  purified  of  its  gross- 
ness  and  cruelty  in  the  austere  but  tender  north  ; 
the  contradictions  and  puerilities  of  its  dogmas 
would  have  been  gradually  evaded,  ignored,  or 
pared  away  by  the  logical  British  minds  —  in 
short,  the  result  would  have  been  that  the  Islam 
of  England  would  have  differed  as  widely  from 
the  intolerable  Mohammedanism  of  Arabia  and 
Central  Asia  as  our  modern  Christianity  differs 
from  the  faith  of  Abyssinia  or  Brazil.  It  is  the 
races  of  Northern  and  Central  Europe  who  have 
made  Christianity  what  it  is.  Left  to  be  de- 


32  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

veloped  by  Syrians,  Arabs,  or  Persians,  the  faith 
of  Christ  would  have  degenerated  into  the  gross, 
bloody,  sensual  creeds  of  nearer  Asia  and  the 
Mediterranean  basin  ;  the  Greeks  would  have — 
have  in  fact — distorted  it  into  an  elaborate  hocus- 
pocus  of  gorgeous,  silly  fetichism  ;  in  the  minds 
of  Indians  and  Chinese  it  would  have  become 
but  an  earlier  (sic)  Buddhism  —  a  moony,  tran- 
scendental, contemplative  faith  of  praying-wheels, 
meritorious  immobility,  vicarious  hymns  bellowed 
through  brazen  trumpets,  abstract  principles, 
theoretical  philanthropy,  and  metaphysics  run 
mad.  Nirvana  is  a  conception  of  beatitude  which 
could  never  have  originated  in,  nor  have  been 
tolerated  by,  the  active,  energetic,  discontented, 
progressive  European." 

There  is  much  that  deserves  consideration  in 
this  vigorous  paragraph,  but  it  does  not  ne- 
cessarily set  forth  the  whole  truth,  or  even  the 
most  important  aspects  of  the  truth. 

As  we  look  back  over  the  marvellous  history  of 
Northern  Christianity,  we  cannot  but  be  struck 
by  the  remarkable  compositeness  of  its  character, 
the  number  of  originally  alien  elements  that  it  has 
in  the  past  been  able  to  absorb,  remodelling, 
rejecting  or  preserving  the  diverse  moral  and 
religious  ideals  that  have  come  within  its  range 
at  one  and  another  stage  of  its  development. 
Springing  into  existence  on  the  partly  Hellenised 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      33 

soil  of  Palestine,  it  had  behind  it  the  many  cen- 
turies of  Hebrew  moral  tradition  ;  and  with  this 
Hebraic  morality,  though  not  without  preliminary 
struggle  and  schism,  it  quickly  co-ordinated  all 
that  it  found  adaptable  in  pre-Christian  Greek 
philosophy.  Moving  westward,  the  growing 
power  fixed  its  visible  central  throne  in  the  im- 
perial city  of  law  and  ordered  strength,  and  caught 
from  its  new  surroundings  the  strong  legal  char- 
acter that  was  to  remain  with  it  through  the  age 
that  we  know  as  medieval.  But,  composite  in  its 
origin  as  Roman  Christianity  was,  it  was  too 
deeply  tainted  (if  the  word  be  not  too  strong)  with 
modes  of  thought  peculiar  to  the  South  to  be  able 
to  satisfy  the  religious  aspirations  of  more  than  a 
few  of  European  peoples,  and  those  by  no  means 
the  most  progressive.  The  vigorous  individual- 
istic temper  of  the  Northern  nations  who  had 
framed  the  warrior  legends  of  Wodin  and  Thor 
was  not  to  be  permanently  subdued  into  Southern 
moulds.  The  North  revolted,  and  Protestant 
Christianity  took  on  a  new  shape,  more  suited  to 
the  rebellious  genius  of  the  energetic  Teuton 
spirit.  The  new  spirit  was  a  spirit  of  growth. 
In  vain  the  earliest  Protestants  sought  to  set 
bounds  to  further  development  and  to  shackle  the 
growing  forces  in  the  chains  of  contemporary 
dogma.  Protestantism  continued  to  develop  and 
expand.  Old  statements  of  dogma  might  be  re- 
D 


34  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

tained  (in  the  same  conservative  spirit  in  which 
English  constitutional  forms  have  been  retained 
through  centuries  of  widely  differing  political 
character),  but  the  ideas  embodied  in  the  dogmas 
have  changed  and  continue  changing.  For  Chris- 
tianity is  no  dead  thing,  but  a  living  plant,  grow- 
ing, and  destined  to  grow  as  long  as  human 
nature  and  national  religious  ideals  are  capable  of 
further  development.  The  old  names  may  remain, 
and  do  good  service  by  remaining— helping  to 
conserve  that  continuity  in  progress  which  makes 
progress  real,  and  keeping  alive  a  spirit  of  loyalty 
to  the  past  which  plays  no  slight  part  in  aiding 
religious  development.  But  the  dogmatism  of 
earlier  centuries  is  giving  place  to  a  theology, 
bold,  alert,  and  aggressive,  going  forth  conquer- 
ing and  to  conquer. 

Thus  has  evolved  our  modern  Protestant  Chris- 
tianity— a  thing  so  different  from  the  Southern 
and  Eastern  forms  of  religion  that  retain  the  same 
name  of  Christian,  that  it  takes  more  than  a  pass- 
ing glance  to  make  out  what  it  is  that  they  have 
in  common.  Composite,  almost  as  human  nature 
is  composite,  acted  on  through  century  after 
century  by  numberless  conflicting  currents  of 
thought,  it  is  hard  for  us  to  question  that,  if  not 
the  last  word  in  the  spiritual  history  of  human- 
kind, it  contains  at  least  the  essential  features  of 
the  world-religion  of  the  future. 


UNIVERSITY  ] 

\^X 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      35 

But  it  is  assuredly  not  the  last  word.  Rather 
than  crudely  copy  the  dogmatic  tone  of  those  who 
believe  that  Christianity  has  already  attained  its 
zenith,  let  us  adopt  the  attitude  of  which  the 
following  may  be  taken  as  a  representative  state- 
ment. In  his  The  Universal  Elements  of  the  Christ- 
ian Religion,  Dr.  C.  C.  Hall  writes  as  follows 
(pp.  88,  89) :  "  If  it  had  been  possible  for  one  set 
of  men  to  legislate  the  form  and  contents  of 
religious  thinking  in  a  manner  permanently  ad- 
equate for  all  Christian  experience,  our  conception 
of  the  vastness  of  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ 
would  shrink.  But  this  never  has  been  possible. 
The  successive  theological  reinterpretations  have 
borne  witness  to  the  sincerity,  and  often  to  the  in- 
sight of  those  that  framed  them.  For  those  who 
used  them  they  have  appeared  to  have  a  relative 
sufficiency.  As  presentments  of  Christian  thought, 
and  interpretations  of  revealed  truth,  they  have 
been  honoured  of  God  and  serviceable  to  man. 
But  their  noblest  quality  has  been,  not  their  re- 
lative adequacy,  but  their  absolute  inadequacy  ;  not 
their  direct  witness  to  certain  aspects  impressing 
the  minds  of  those  who  framed  them,  but  their 
indirect  witness,  through  their  insufficiency  for 
other  minds,  to  the  immensity  of  the  scope  of  the 
manifestation  to  the  world,  of  God  in  Christ.  Had 
Europe  slept  in  ignorance  beneath  the  limited 
view  of  God  and  His  universe  that  prevailed  in 


36  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

the  age  of  Hildebrand,  and  was  not  materially 
enlarged  by  the  Council  of  Trent,  one  might  con- 
clude that  Christianity  is  but  an  ethnic  faith.  But 
with  the  rebirth  of  learning  and  the  emancipation 
of  thought  came  the  rolling  back  of  clouds,  the 
uncovering  of  landscapes,  the  multitudinous  self- 
fulfilments  of  God ;  and  the  students  of  truth 
awoke ;  and  every  one  had  a  doctrine,  a  tongue, 
a  revelation,  an  interpretation  ;  and  lo  !  the  wide- 
ness  of  God's  mercy  was  as  the  wideness  of  the 
sea — and  the  love  of  God  was  broader  than  the 
measure  of  man's  mind." 

§  9.  Yet  generous  and  broad  as  its  tolerant 
training  has  been,  it  remains  true  that  in  the 
school  of  Protestant  Christianity  none  of  us  has 
acquired  the  breadth  of  view  necessary  for  the 
just  estimation  of  alien  ideals  of  life.  Our  moral 
education  remains  largely  a  matter  of  peremptory 
instructions  to  abstain,  unreasoningly,  from  this 
or  that  line  of  action,  as  being  universally  re- 
pugnant to  moral  agents,  abhorrent  to  good  taste, 
or  incompatible  with  "good  form."  The  faintest 
attempts  to  argue  on  such  points  are  promptly 
frowned  down,  and  the  more  inquiring  tempera- 
ments quickly  learn  the  lesson  that  to  propose 
unbiassed  discussion  of  this  and  that  is  to  invite 
a  painful  ostracism.  Certain  topics,  or  certain 
ways  of  approaching  particular  topics,  are  sternly 
tabooed.  Thus  we  are  rapidly  moulded  into 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      37 

bundles  of  prejudices  and  rendered  unable  to 
breathe  freely  in  more  than  a  single  "  psycho- 
logical climate."  By  having  the  conclusions 
which  were  slowly  formed  by  our  ancestors 
hardened  into  the  framework  of  our  moral  being 
we  are  saved  the  often  wasteful,  but  often  bene- 
ficial, trouble  of  investigating  the  greater  number 
of  moral  laws  for  ourselves.  Psychological  and 
physiological  habitudes  and  aptitudes  are  firmly 
built  into  us  by  this  excellent  discipline.  We  are 
forced  to  grow,  more  or  less,  in  the  directions 
which  the  community  to  which  we  belong  ap- 
proves. The  possibilities  of  variation  are  reduced 
within  narrow  bounds  for  all  of  us,  by  limitations 
which  on  the  whole  may  be  good  but  occasionally 
prove  seriously  harmful. 

The  training  is  beneficial,  almost  entirely  bene- 
ficial, as  long  as  we  live  our  lives  within  the 
ancestral  environment.  But  environments  change. 
Horizons  grow ;  and  the  world  contracts.  The 
criteria  of  right  and  wrong  that  had  a  relative 
adequacy  as  long  as  we  did  not  step  beyond  the 
tribal  or  national  lines,  fail  us  when  we  seek  to 
apply  them  in  other  surroundings.  Our  judg- 
ments, for  instance,  of  the  "lower  races"  are 
liable  to  go  madly  astray.  Their  social  institu- 
tions seem  at  first  sight  to  serve  no  purposes 
which  are  not  unutterably  bad.  The  indiffer- 
ence of  the  alien  mind  in  the  presence  of  a 


38  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

thousand  and  one  of  our  petty  conventions  seems 
evidence  of  nothing  but  innate  depravity.  In  our 
haste  to  condemn  him  we  jumble  together  with 
more  serious  matters  his  violations  of  our  cere- 
monial code  (questions  of  Sabbatarianism,  clothing, 
conventional  courtesies  involving  polite  untruth- 
fulness,  artificial  limitations  on  what  may  be  men- 
tioned and  what  not),  and  often  fail  utterly  to  dis- 
tinguish such  matters  from  the  essentials  of  moral 
rectitude.  Meanwhile,  he  too  is  applying  the  same 
process  of  judgment,  and  weighing  in  the  balances 
0«rshameless  misdoings.1  And  only  very  slowly, 
and  very  partially,  if  at  all,  do  we  come  to  a  juster 
appreciation  of  ourselves  and  of  him,  and  learn 
to  discriminate  between  trifles  and  serious  matters. 
Our  early  training,  while  keeping  us  from  certain 
lines  of  action  that  our  own  people  disapprove, 
has  deprived  us  of  the  power  to  judge  justly, 
outside  our  own  community,  concerning  every- 
thing connected  with  these  forbidden  courses. 

Moreover,  when  we  compare  our  own  social  and 
political  institutions  as  a  whole  with  those  of  the 
stranger,  nothing  is  more  natural  than  to  dwell 

1  Dr.  Oldfield,  for  instance,  remarks  (Hibbert  Journal,  April, 
1903,  "The  Failure  of  Christian  Missions  in  India")  that  he  has 
everywhere  among  Hindus  "found  the  same  deep-seated  belief 
that  the  practice  of  Christian  missioners  was  so  much  lower 
in  the  matter  of  actual  cleanliness  and  humaneness  in  eating  and 
drinking  and  bathing,  that  it  was  felt  that  it  would  be  actual 
degradation  to  become  a  Christian."  Cf.  also  Sir  F.  S.  Lely's 
Suggestions  for  the  Better  Governing  of  India ,  passim. 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      39 

on  the  obvious  good  points  of  our  own  world  and 
to  look  upon  the  accompanying  evils  as  unavoid- 
able disadvantages  not  to  be  estimated  as  corol- 
laries of  the  system  as  a  whole.  We  are  quick, 
for  instance,  to  feel  and  express  exasperation  at 
the  shiftlessness,  the  improvidence,  the  lack  of 
industry  which  we  observe  among  backward 
races.  They  are  content  with  so  little  in  the 
way  of  material  goods ;  their  stagnation  is  con- 
temptible and  disgusting;  and  so  forth,  and  so 
forth.  But  we  forget,  as  we  pass  this  judgment, 
that  such  peoples  often  preserve  in  large  measure 
the  personal  freedom  and  manly  self-respect  and 
self-reliance  which  great  masses  of  our  own  pro- 
ducing "  hands"  are  compelled  to  forego.  We 
are  trained  to  a  certain  blindness  as  regards 
particular  elements  of  our  social  environment,  and 
we  cannot  understand  the  corresponding  blind- 
ness of  others.  And  so  it  happens  quite  naturally 
that  "the  inhumanity  of  the  Chinese,  not  being 
the  inhumanity  of  London,  Paris,  Berlin,  or 
New  York,  can  always  be  recited  to  arouse 
crowds  in  those  cities  to  a  righteous  horror 
of  the  '  heathen  Chinee ' — just  as  the  Western 
civilisations  can  be  described  in  Pekin  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  cultured  Chinaman, 
and  be  made  the  starting-point  of  a  Boxer 
movement."1 

1  Mr.  J.  R.  Macdonald  in  the  Journal  of  Ethics,  July,  1901. 


40  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

§  10.  But  why,  it  may  be  asked,  is  it  of  conse- 
quence to  reach  correct  estimates  of  the  relative 
ethical  position,  in  theory  or  in  practice,  of  the 
nations  which  we  are  desirous  of  elevating? 
Seeing  that  we  desire  to  elevate  them,  what 
matters  it  to  what  height  precisely  they  have 
already  attained?  Such  considerations,  it  may 
be  urged,  are  for  the  study  only.  What  we  need 
is  incentives  to  more  strenuous  missionary  ac- 
tivity, and  the  blacker  the  picture  we  draw  of  the 
inferior  people,  the  more  likely  are  we  to  get  the 
needed  work  done. 

Such  an  attitude,  with  regard  to  the  settled 
civilisation  of  Asia  at  any  rate,  betrays  a  most 
serious  ignorance  of  the  issues  at  stake.  Great 
numbers  of  the  people  of  India  are  steady  readers 
of  what  is  written  in  England  about  their  country. 
To  indulge  in  ignorant  statements  about  their 
national  religions  is,  as  Dr.  Oldfield  says,  to 
build  up  against  the  missionaries'  creed  "an  im- 
penetrable wall  of  silent  pity."1  To  deal  similarly 
with  the  national  character  is  to  rouse  something 
worse  than  contempt.  What  Dr.  Oldfield  writes 
of  the  English  missionary  may  not  be  at  all 
typical  of  the  broader -minded  workers  of  the 
present  day,  but  in  so  far  as  it  is,  or  has  been, 
true,  it  would  account  for  the  extinction  of  much 
sympathy.  "They  see  that  to  get  funds  for 

1  Hibbert  Journal,  April,  1903. 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      41 

missionary  work  it  is  necessary  nowadays  to  use 
startling  colours,  and  lay  them  on  thickly,  with 
the  result  that  to  English  audiences  missionaries 
frequently  paint  Indian  life  in  absolutely  false 
colours.  They  tell  tales  which  are  quite  true 
indeed,  but  which  are  given  as  typical  illustra- 
tions of  Indian  life,  whereas  they  give  as  false 
a  picture  as  if  a  Hindu  working  in  our  East  End 
slums,  with  all  their  filth  and  overcrowding,  and 
drunkenness  and  debauchery,  and  foul  language 
and  immorality,  were  to  go  back  and  relate 
stories  from  his  work  there  as  if  these  stories 
were  typical  of  English  life !  " 

Tactlessness,  such  as  this,  may  be  found  out- 
side the  sphere  of  mission  work.  It  detracts 
largely  from  the  efficiency  of  our  educational 
and  administrative  work  alike.  Here  is  a  pas- 
sage from  the  pen  of  a  sympathetic  ex-civilian. 
"  There  is  many  an  Englishman  who  in  the  way 
of  duty  would — in  time  of  trial  does— die  for  the 
people,  who  will  not  take  the  trouble  to  be  civil 
to  them,  or  to  learn  their  little  turns  of  talk,  of 
social  rule,  of  religious  observance.  Naturally 
he  fails  to  attract  cordial  feeling,  for  to  most 
men  it  is  easier  to  '  love  them  that  hate  you ' 
than  them  that  despise  you.  Thus  the  native 
Chief  who  has  to  be  pressed  by  the  Political 
Agent  to  feed  his  people  in  famine,  or  who  runs 
away  from  them  in  their  extremity  to  a  happier 


42  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN  ASIA 

clime,  wins  more  affection  than  the  dogged  Eng- 
lishman who  stands  by  them.  For  the  Chief 
knows  them,  and  at  least  is  never  suspected  of 
laughing  at  them,  though  he  may  be  hard  on 
them.  Even  in  his  selfishness  he  is  intelligible 
and  touches  a  common  chord'*  (Sir  F.  S.  Lely, 
Suggestions  for  the  Better  Governing  of  India, 
p.  8). 

What  is  evidently  needed  in  the  work  of  educa- 
tionist and  administrator  alike  is  a  steadfast  at- 
titude of  sympathy,  combined  with  a  wholesomely 
stern  determination  never  to  blink  facts  or  indulge 
in  weak-minded  self-deception  with  regard  to 
results  attained  or  immediately  attainable.  Even 
the  question  of  justice  in  our  administrative  deal- 
ings hardly  takes  precedence  of  the  need  for  sym- 
pathetic treatment.  For  few  non-European  peoples 
have  any  conception  of  what  we  mean  by  such 
moral  qualities.  One  writer  on  Indian  matters 
goes  so  far  as  to  declare  that  according  to  the 
native's  view  of  what  constitutes  a  strictly  upright 
administration  of  justice,  it  consists  in  an  un- 
biassed tendency  to  decide  in  favour  of  the  litigant 
who  bribes  highest,  together  with  a  conscientious 
regularity  in  returning  their  unavailing  gifts  to 
those  whom  the  judge  has  sent  empty  away ; 
while  of  both  the  Indian  in  India  and  the  Negro 
in  America  it  is  asserted  that  they  go  to  law 
habitually  in  the  mental  condition  of  mere 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      43 

gamblers.  Our  European  notions  with  regard  to 
such  matters  are  too  high  above  their  heads  for 
them  to  grasp.  "To  say  nothing  of  missionary 
experience,  it  is  the  cross  of  every  official  who 
represents  the  English  in  India  that  the  longer 
he  lives  in  the  country,  the  less,  in  innumerable 
ways,  does  he  believe  that  he  will  ever  understand 
it :  that  to  the  last  he  will  be  irritated  and  dis- 
appointed that  his  motives  and  his  principles,  his 
most  treasured  theories  of  justice,  and  his  most 
disinterested  executive  acts  are  accepted  by  the 
people  whom  he  rules  as  the  crotchets — inevitable, 
of  course,  and  happily,  beneficent  on  the  whole — 
of  people  whose  thoughts  and  whose  ways  form  a 
mysterious  dispensation  of  Providence,  to  be  en- 
dured since  it  cannot  be  amended.  As  a  fervently 
imaginative  child  looks  on  at  the  ways  of  its  elders, 
and  wonders  how  people  who  might  be  playing 
spend  their  time  in  reading  books  or  paying  visits, 
so  a  Hindu  surveys  the  English  system,  ad- 
ministrative, judicial,  financial,  and  marvels  how  it 
ever  came  about  that  human  beings  should  behave 
so  unaccountably.  ...  If  only  they  would  let  us 
alone — would  see  that  what  commends  itself  to 
them  is  put  out  of  court  for  us  by  just  what  they 
think  its  advantages ! — this  perhaps  would  sum 
up,  to  a  great  extent,  the  attitude  of  the  Indian 
mind  to  Europeans  and  to  everything  they  do."1 

1  "  Missions  to  the  Hindus,"  Church  Quarterly,  October,  1902. 


44  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

Mere  uprightness  of  dealing  is  not,  therefore, 
a  quality  which  by  itself  will  compensate  for 
a  general  moral  aloofness.  An  assumption  of 
superiority  irritates  and  alienates  ;  while  an  at- 
titude of  ready  and  sustained  sympathy  permits  the 
growth  of  a  mutual  comprehension  which  makes 
for  mutual  profit. 

§  ii.  But  while  admitting  the  fallibility  of  our 
one-sided  judgments  on  our  own  and  other  races' 
moral  positions,  it  will  be  necessary  to  assume 
that  our  Western  ideals,  though  not  above  criti- 
cism, and  always  susceptible  of  development,  stand 
higher  in  the  main  than  those  which  are  at  present 
effective  elsewhere  (except  possibly  in  Japan). 

To  the  highest  of  these  ideals  it  will  be  most 
convenient  to  refer  always  as  "  Christian  "  ideals, 
even  though  we  recognise  that  they  have  fre- 
quently been  upheld  by  teachers  who  would  re- 
pudiate the  name  of  Christian,  in  opposition  to 
cruder  views  championed  for  the  moment  by  those 
who  claimed  to  speak  for  Christianity.  For  the 
peculiar  strength  of  Christianity — the  agnostic 
moralist  would  perhaps  prefer  to  say,  "of  Western 
Civilisation  " — lies  in  its  ever-developing  capacity 
of  assimilating  ideas  that  it  once  combated,  and 
thus  growing  in  richness  of  content  from  era  to 
era  ;  so  that  whatever  at  any  moment  is  seen  to  be 
highest  and  truest  becomes  ipso  facto  an  integral 
part  of  Christian  thought,  and  whatever  the  con- 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      45 

science  of  the  leaders  of  Western  thought  decides 
to  condemn  ceases  ipso  facto  to  have  a  claim  to  be 
included  in  any  system  of  Christian  ethics. 

The  religions  which  Christianity  would  replace 
are  not  in  the  same  way  developing  religions. 
Irregular  modification  they  indeed  admit  of,  and 
perhaps  some  measure  of  true  growth.  But  none, 
save  Christianity,  is  so  happily  allied  with  the 
foremost  scientific  principles  of  the  time  as  to  be 
able  to  welcome,  and  advance  with,  the  advance 
of  scientific  knowledge.  It  is  to  this  very  readi- 
ness to  adapt  itself  that  Christianity  owes  the 
confusing  multiplicity  of  the  shapes  it  has  as- 
sumed. It  is  to  this  also  that  it  owes  its  con- 
tinuing strength.  It  is  the  religion  of  the  world's 
future  because  it  refuses  to  be  formulated  in  a 
single  set  of  documents,  because  it  claims  as  its 
own  at  every  step  whatever  it  realises  to  be  the 
highest  in  ethics,  because  it  is  ever  looking  for- 
ward, admitting  that  now  it  sees  but  in  part, 
and  that  the  perfect  light  is  still  to  come. 

Looking  at  the  task  of  the  Christian  pro- 
pagandist in  this  light,  the  critic  of  missionary 
work  will  refrain  from  grotesque  attempts  to 
estimate  its  success  by  exclusively  statistical 
means — attempts  such  as  have  been  made  by 
Canon  Taylor,  who  even  goes  so  far  as  to 
declare  that  the  fewness  of  the  conversions 
means  that  the  money  of  Sunday-school  children 


46  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

is  obtained  "  on  false  pretences."1  The  whole 
tenor  of  his  argument  (which  may  be  taken  as 
typical)  would  seem  to  imply  that  we  have  here 
and  now  in  England  a  perfected  form  of  religion, 
the  holders  of  which  stand  marked  off  by  clear- 
cut  boundary  lines  from  the  heathen  world  out- 
side the  pale.  Against  such  a  position  it  is 
hard  to  argue.  One  can  only  set  in  opposition 
to  it  the  assumption,  common  to  modern  theo- 
logy, philosophy,  and  science,  that  "we  are  but 
ancients  of  the  earth,  and  in  the  morning  of  the 
times."  A  Christianity  that  humbly  accepts  this 
evolutionary  view  of  its  position  and  functions, 
that  believes  it  has  much  further  to  travel  before 
it  attains  its  perfect  stature  than  it  has  traversed 
in  all  the  centuries  of  the  past,  will  welcome 
with  equal  satisfaction  the  smallest  upward  stride 
of  the  most  debased  as  of  the  most  advanced 
of  humankind.  Only  a  fractional  percentage  of 
the  sum  total  of  upward  steps  taken  by  all  the 
dwellers  upon  earth  can  come  within  the  range 
of  a  statistical  estimate  such  as  Canon  Taylor 
wishes  to  frame.  Does  the  missionary  therefore 
fail  if  he  merely  performs  the  preliminary  task 
of  raising,  by  a  single  grade,  the  great-grand- 
fathers of  the  first  recognisable  Christians  of  a 
darkened  continent? 

1  "The  Great  Missionary  Failure"  (Fortnightly  Review,  October, 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      47 

§  12.  One  of  the  points  at  which  the  practical 
ethics  of  East  and  West  clash  most  strangely  is 
the  question  of  the  complexity  of  the  individual 
life.  The  Oriental  honours  above  all  things  the 
renunciations  of  the  ascetic ;  so  much  so,  that 
many  critics  assert  that  unless  its  advocates  are 
prepared  to  adopt  ascetic  ideals  Christianity  can 
hope  to  make  but  little  progress  in  Hindustan.1 
The  Western  moralist  may  be  ready  to  admit 
that  a  man  must  lose  himself  to  find  himself; 
but  he  cannot  go  yet  further  and  say,  with  the 
Buddhist,  that  it  is  well  to  lose  one's  self  in 
complete  negation  of  self,  desiring  not  to  find 
one's  self  again,  but  utterly  to  cease  from  inde- 
pendent being.  The  only  negation  of  egoism 
which  the  Christian  can  find  it  in  his  heart  to 
praise  is  that  which  takes  the  form  of  altruism. 
He  is  ready  to  honour  the  renunciation  that 
results  from  the  desire  to  serve  others,  but  can 
see  no  value  in  self-negating  courses  adopted 
without  regard  to  social  good.  It  is  not  a  pur- 
poseless emptying  of  self,  but  rather  the  foster- 
ing of  a  "full"  life — not  egoistic  self-suppression 
but  rather  strenuous  self-development — that  wins 
from  him  the  tribute  of  admiration.2 

1  See  e.g.,  the  quotation  from  Dr.  Oldfield,  infra,  p.  54. 

2  The  contrast  is  well  put  by  Bishop  Whitehead,  of  Madras. 
"  Christianity  regards  the  personality  of  man  as  of  the  essence  of 
his  nature,  and  teaches  that  the  highest  destiny  of  man  is  the 
perfect  development  of  his  personality  in  its  true  relation  to  the 


48  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

Thus  to  the  practical  European  mind  it  is  natural 
to  see  the  first  beginnings  of  a  backward  race's 
progress  in  the  development  of  new  economic 
wants,  necessitating  for  their  satisfaction  the 
development  of  the  more  fundamental  prudential 
virtues.  In  lands  (such  as  certain  parts  of 
Central  Africa)  where  industry  is  scarcely  known 
and  quite  unhonoured,  the  first  signs  of  a  higher 
view  of  life  will  be  connected,  by  the  European, 
with  the  beginnings  of  a  consistent  industrious- 
ness  ;  while  among  peoples  of  another  type,  for 
whom,  though  patient  industry  is  an  established 
virtue,  universal  marriage  also  is  the  rule  of  life, 
a  sense  of  the  duty  of  self-restraint  with  regard 
to  the  growth  of  the  numbers  of  the  population 

infinite  personality  of  God.  But  the  Indian  view  of  man  makes 
his  personality  a  kind  of  disease,  the  ultimate  source  of  all  his 
misery  and  weakness,  so  that  the  highest  aim  of  human  life  is  to 
get  rid  of  personality  altogether,  and  be  lost  in  the  impersonal 
being  of  the  Infinite.  It  is  obvious  that  these  fundamentally 
different  views  of  God  and  man  affect  profoundly  the  whole  scale 
of  moral  and  religious  ideas.  The  ideas  of  sin,  moral  responsi- 
bility and  salvation,  which  are  natural  to  a  Christian,  are  entirely 
unnatural  to  a  Hindu  philosopher"  (The  East  and  the  West, 
January,  1905).  Cf.,  in  the  same  number,  the  following  (by  the 
Bishop  of  Birmingham).  "Now  our  whole  English  civilisation, 
our  whole  idea  of  the  reality  of  the  world  and  the  rationality  of 
the  universe,  our  whole  conception  of  progress,  is  rooted  in  the 
thought  that  personality,  the  efforts  of  individuality,  the  desire 
and  the  will  to  live,  is  a  good  and  not  a  bad  thing.  Hindu  civilisa- 
tion is  rooted  on  an  exactly  contrary  idea — the  conception  that 
the  world  and  all  its  visible  phenomena  and  all  human  life  is  one 
great  illusion  which  has  to  be  got  rid  of  at  all  cost,  and  behind 
which  there  is  the  one  impersonal  reality." 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      49 

needs  to  be  first  implanted.  In  these  prudential 
virtues — industry,  self-restraint,  and  their  like — 
the  practical  sense  of  Europe  rightly  sees  the 
indispensable  bases  for  the  building  up  of  a 
purposeful  orderly  life. 

But  our  pulpit-preachers,  our  poets,  and  our 
philosophic  moralists,  bent  on  correcting  an  ex- 
cessive racial  bias  in  this  particular  direction, 
have  found  it  necessary  at  home  to  reiterate  the 
complementary  teaching,  warning  us  that  the 
needless  multiplication  of  our  wants  leads  to  the 
gravest  of  evils,  encouraging  a  demoralising 
competitive  struggle  for  the  means  of  luxury  and 
social  distinction.  "Take  no  thought  for  the 
morrow,"  we  are  told  ;  "consider  the  lilies  of  the 
field."  Yet  the  preacher  would  quickly  change 
his  text  if  he  found  himself  confronted  by 
the  squalor  of  an  African  village,  where  love 
of  ease  prevents  proper  precautions  being  taken 
for  the  harvesting  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth, 
or  for  the  promotion  of  a  life  of  decency  and 
health. 

What  then  are  we  to  believe,  and  what  to  teach? 
Where  can  we  draw  the  line  ?  Are  we  to  uphold 
one  ideal  for  ourselves  and  another  for  "the 
heathen "  ?  Assuredly  no.  Have  we  not  rather 
here  an  instance  of  that  necessity  of  reformulating 
our  ideals,  to  which  attention  has  already  been 
drawn?  As  long  as  our  moralists  desired  to 


50  WHITE    MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

correct  a  faulty  bias  in  Western  character  they 
laid  all  the  stress  of  their  teaching  on  one  aspect 
only,  so  that  that  aspect  came  to  be  identified 
with  the  Christian  ideal,  and  was  taken  for  the 
whole  truth.  Brought  into  contact  with  the  in- 
dolent African  or  the  improvident  Hindu,  our 
missionaries  must  learn  to  emphasise  another 
aspect,  or  their  teaching,  losing  the  necessary 
ring  of  sincerity,  will  fail  to  carry  conviction. 

The  difficulty  in  this  particular  case  lies  in  the 
impossibility  of  generalising  as  to  when  the  idle- 
ness or  the  ambitious  activity  is  likely  to  be  more 
anti-social  in  its  tendency.  A  higher  life,  Aris- 
totle's evepyeia  /car  aperyv  apio-Ttjv,  can  only  be 
built  up  on  the  basis  of  a  preliminary  training  in 
the  elementary  virtues  of  industry  and  subordina- 
tion :  Aristotle  would  even  make  it  dependent  on 
the  continued  existence  of  a  servile  population  ; 
and  there  is  at  least  a  plausible  case  to  be  made 
out  for  the  educative  value  of  slavery.  Mr. 
Booker  Washington,  himself  an  ex-slave,  writes : 
"  American  slavery  was  a  great  curse  to  both 
races,  and  I  would  be  the  last  to  apologise  for  it ; 
but,  in  the  presence  of  God,  I  believe  that  slavery 
laid  the  foundation  for  the  solution  of  the  problem 
that  is  now  before  us  in  the  South.  During 
slavery  the  Negro  was  taught  every  trade,  every 
industry,  that  constitutes  the  foundation  for 
making  a  living"  (The  Future  of  the  American 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      51 

Negro,  p.  221).  Mr.  Bryce  also  remarks  that 
"in  point  of  natural  capacity  and  force  of  char- 
acter the  Bantu  races  are  at  least  equal,  prob- 
ably superior,  to  the  negroes  brought  from  Africa 
to  North  America,  most  of  whom  seem  to  have 
come  from  the  Guinea  Coast.  But  in  point  of 
education  and  in  habits  of  industry  the  American 
negroes  are  far  ahead  of  the  South  African,"1 
and  he  sees  the  cause  of  this  difference  partly 
in  the  compulsory  training  received  during  the 
slave  era  (though  also,  of  course,  in  the  oppor- 
tunities of  advancement  that  have  succeeded  the 
civil  war). 

But  not  only  is  an  industrial  training  the  best 
of  trainings  in  itself,  as  increasing  the  sense  of 
power  and  consequently  the  self-respect  of  the 
native  ;  the  discovery  also  of  what  can  be  done 
with  his  earnings  (though  of  course  frequently 
a  disastrous  discovery)  is  itself  a  stimulus  to 
development.  "The  receipt  of  high  wages  is  an 
education  altogether  practical  and  open  to  none 
of  the  objections  freely  brought  against  that  given 
in  the  mission  school.  Such  wages  mean  new 
wants,  at  first  no  doubt  more  wives,  more  cows, 
gaudy  apparel,  revolvers,  and  greater  consump- 
tion of  (  Cape  smoke,'  but  gradually  the  acquisi- 
tion of  the  best  things  of  civilisation,  a  drawing 
together  as  to  tastes  and  habits  of  the  white  and 

1  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  p.  4^8. 


52  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN    ASIA 

coloured  races."1  New  wants  thus  create  new 
activities,  and  the  new  activities  stimulate  yet 
further  wants,  and  thus  the  savage  is  allured  step 
by  step,  almost  without  himself  perceiving  it, 
from  his  pristine  state  of  slothful  indifference. 

The  Christian  missions  in  South  and  Central 
Africa  are  therefore  probably  acting  wisely  in 
laying  stress  on  the  industrial  side  of  their  work, 
in  erecting  technical  schools  for  giving  as  ex- 
tensive a  training  in  agriculture  and  the  minor 
manufacturing  arts  as  is  possible,  and  in  en- 
couraging their  converts  to  acquire  such  practical 
knowledge  as  their  teachers  can  provide.  "I 
hold,"  says  a  missionary  bishop,  "that,  in  the 
natural  order  of  things,  necessity  comes  before 
choice;  *  must '  comes  before  'ought,'  and  work 
for  a  living  before  work  for  a  liking.  And  as  I 
hold  that  some  sort  of  work  is  the  heritage  of  all, 
from  the  king  to  the  cottager,  from  the  palace  to 
the  kraal,  since  life  means  movement  with  a  pur- 
pose, it  follows  that,  if  we  are  to  do  our  duty  to 
the  native  races  of  the  countries  Providence  has 
given  us,  they  must  be  taught  the  necessity  of 
work  with  body  and  brains.  .  .  .  The  problem 
before  us,  therefore,  is  to  create  such  conditions 
and  such  wants  as  shall  induce  a  natural  (not  a 
fictitious  or  tyrannical)  necessity — such  a  necessity, 

1  Mr.  J.  Macdonnell,  "The  Natives  of  South  Africa"  (Nine- 
teenth Century,  February,  1901). 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      53 

in  fact,  as  shall  practically  force  every  able-bodied 
lad  and  man  in  the  country  to  earn  his  own  living 
and  the  living  of  his  family."1 

§  13.  But  in  the  respect  which  we  pay  to  the 
prudential  virtues  we  must  beware  of  falling  into 
the  complementary  error  of  exalting  them  to  too 
high  a  place.  The  agitation  among  certain  sec- 
tions of  the  colonists  for  black  labour  to  be  made 
compulsory  (whether  by  the  imposition  of  un- 
necessary taxation  or  otherwise)  is,  to  say  the 
least,  of  questionable  merits.  Man's  sole  business 
is  not  the  production  of  material  things,  and  the 
white  man  who  devotes  his  whole  energies  to  the 
amassing  of  wealth  can  scarcely  be  accounted  a 
nobler  being  than  the  savage,  whose  desire  is  for 
the  least  effort  and  the  utmost  leisure ;  while  he 
must  certainly  be  classed  as  lower  in  the  moral 
scale  than  most  of  the  saddhus  of  India. 

Such  an  over-emphasising  of  typical  Western 
virtues  is  more  likely  to  be  a  fault  of  Western 
politicians  than  of  Christian  missionaries.  For 
the  propagandist  himself  is  little  likely  to  be  a 
typical  representative  of  Western  thought  and 
practice,  and  he  will  probably  have  had  a  pre- 
liminary training  in  the  Christian  ministry,  and 
be  more  inclined  to  denounce  the  contemptible 
side  of  Western  life  than  to  do  justice  to  its 
nobler  qualities.  His  temptation  will  rather  be 

1  Bishop  Gaul,  quoted  by  Davis,  The  Native  Problem,  p.  54. 


54  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

to  under-emphasise  what  in  his  heart  he  must 
recognise  to  be  after  all  essential,  and  to  mis- 
represent and  emasculate  our  ethics  in  the  hope 
of  attracting  the  mystical  asceticism  of  India  or 
the  fantastic  emotionalism  of  the  Negro,  in  order 
to  assure  the  superficial  success  of  his  propa- 
gandist activities. 

As  evidence  of  the  reality  of  this  danger  it  will 
be  sufficient  to  quote  the  advice  of  a  recent  critic 
(Dr.  Oldfield,  in  ti& Hibbert  Journal,  April,  1903), 
who,  speaking  of  the  contempt  for  English  mis- 
sionaries which  he  believes  to  be  felt  in  educated 
Indian  circles,  asserts  that  "it  would  be  better  to 
send  a  dozen  spiritual  men,  who  would,  living 
at  one  place,  emulate  the  saintly  lives  and  ascetic 
practices  of  the  early  fathers  of  the  Christian 
Church  .  .  .  rather  than  to  send  men  in  scattered 
units,  under  all  sorts  of  various  administrations, 
to  degenerate  into  elementary  schoolmasters  and 
managers  of  outcast  children's  homes  and  orphan- 
ages." In  other  words,  Dr.  Oldfield  believes  that 
we  should  send  to  the  East  men  who  would  up- 
hold not  the  ideals  of  our  own  time  and  race 
but  the  ideals  of  medieval  Europe,  which,  them- 
selves of  Oriental  growth,  have  since  been  de- 
finitively rejected  by  the  Protestant  North.  A 
nominal  adherence  to  an  inferior  form  of  Chris- 
tianity we  could  no  doubt  further  by  such  a 
method  of  proselytism,  but  who  would  be  willing 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      55 

to  make  sacrifices  in  such  a  cause?  If  we  believe 
in  the  positive  virtues  which  we  praise  at  home, 
it  is  rank  hypocrisy  and  folly  to  glorify  the 
negative  qualities  which  the  East  already  adores, 
and  to  declare  such  to  be  of  the  essence  of 
Christianity,  and  the  best  which  Europe  can  offer 
to  Asia.  Doubtless  a  genuine  sympathy  with 
the  passive  ideals  of  Buddhism,  and  a  reasonable 
respect  for  the  earnestness  of  the  ascetic,  are 
desirable  features  in  a  missionary's  character. 
But  to  "  emulate"  the  "  ascetic  practices"  of 
Oriental  religions  is  to  identify  ourselves  with 
a  belief  in  the  inherently  evil  nature  of  "the 
world  "  and  "the  flesh  "  that  is  one  of  the  degrad- 
ing heritages  of  the  Asiatic  influences  from  which 
philosophic  Christianity  is  earnestly  striving  to 
shake  itself  free. 

§  14.  It  is  in  relation  to  ethical  points  such  as 
these  that  the  undecided  character  of  Western 
teaching  shows  its  most  marked  defects.  But  in 
the  sphere  of  religion  proper  the  wide  divergence 
between  the  most  advanced  thought — the  thought 
that  recognises  in  Christianity  an  evolving  system 
of  truth — and  the  commoner  view,  which  sees  in 
some  contemporary  statement  of  dogma  a  position 
of  unassailable  strength,  is  also  fruitful  of  evil  for 
the  work  of  the  mission  field.  It  is  seldom  that 
those  who  take  the  humbler  view  of  Christian 
fallibility  are  as  ready  to  fling  themselves  away  in 


56  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

the  service  of  non-Christian  humanity  as  are  the 
dogmatists,  and  this  not  so  much  through  any 
lack  of  moral  earnestness  as  from  a  difficulty  in 
seeing  clearly  what  sort  of  message  they  are  to 
carry  to  the  dark  places  of  the  earth,  and  how  they 
are  to  make  intelligible  to  the  more  backward 
minds  what  the  great  mass  of  their  fellow- 
Europeans  have  failed  to  grasp.  Thus  an 
American  bishop,  speaking  of  the  type  of  man 
required  for  service  in  India,  gives  his  opinion 
thus  :  "The  Christian  Church  of  America  cannot 
afford  to  export  doubts  or  even  religious  specula- 
tion to  foreign  fields.  The  people  of  India,  and 
I  may  add  of  other  lands,  are  abundantly  able  to 
provide  all  the  doubts  and  all  the  unprofitable 
speculation  that  any  Church  will  care  to  contend 
with."1 

Of  course  the  inner  significance  of  this  remark 
will  depend  upon  the  full  meaning  attached  to  the 
phrase  "  religious  speculation."  And  it  must  be 
admitted  that  few  missionaries  are  likely  to  be 
able  to  hold  consistently  to  the  modern  view  of 
Christianity  without  presenting  an  appearance  of 
unprofitable  weakness  (though  readers  of  Dr. 
Hume's  Missions  from  the  Modern  View  will 
realise  that  there  is  a  place  for  such  missionaries, 
and  that  such  missionaries  are  to  be  found).  On 

1  Bishop  Thoburn  (quoted  in  Mr.  J.  P.  Jones'  India  s  Problem, 
Krishna  or  Christ,  p.  209). 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      57 

the  other  hand,  the  very  positiveness  of  the  dog- 
matic preacher,  while  rendering  him,  perhaps, 
more  effective  among  certain  strata  of  the  popula- 
tion, deprives  him  of  all  influence  among  the 
cultured  and  partly  cultured  classes  of  a  country 
like  India.  He  is  no  match  for  the  subtle-brained 
dialectician  who  is  trained  in  the  habit  of  follow- 
ing out  metaphysical  speculations  such  as  few 
Europeans  care  to  unravel,  and  who  is  likely  to 
be  aware,  unless  his  reading  in  Western  literature 
and  his  acquaintance  with  educated  Englishmen 
are  very  confined,  that  there  is  scarcely  a  dogma 
of  Christianity  which  is  not  hotly  combated  in 
Europe  by  Christian  as  well  as  by  agnostic  writers. 
Until,  therefore,  the  central  truths  of  Christian 
philosophy  can  be  so  formulated  as  to  present 
a  clear-cut  body  of  doctrine  such  as  the  ablest  of 
our  earnest-minded  thinkers  can  accept  and  clear- 
headed men  can  be  found  willing  to  devote  them- 
selves to  propagating  abroad,  the  nominal,  super- 
ficial progress  of  Christianity  in  countries  like 
India  is  likely  to  remain  disappointingly  slight. 
But  even  while  we  continue  to  work  on  our 
present  haphazard  and  defective  system,  there 
can  be  little  question  of  its  real  success  in  ways 
less  easily  measured.  By  the  elevating  influence 
of  its  partially  understood  ideals  there  is  little 
doubt  that  Christian  teaching,  even  though  osten- 
sibly rejected,  has  done  more  to  evoke  a  higher 


58  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

morality  in  India  than  all  preceding  waves  of 
religious  propagandism.  Among  other  evidences 
we  may  point  to  the  Unitarian  teaching  connected 
with  the  name  of  the  Brahma  Samaj — a  force  in 
modern  India  making  distinctly  for  righteousness, 
and  unmistakably  a  product  of  the  clash  of  Chris- 
tianity and  Hinduism.  A  member  of  this  society 
in  a  public  lecture1  has  said  that  "the  spirit  of 
Christianity  has  already  pervaded  the  whole  atmo- 
sphere of  Indian  society,  and  we  breathe,  think, 
feel,  and  move  in  a  Christian  atmosphere.  Native 
society  is  being  roused,  enlightened,  and  reformed 
under  the  influence  of  Christian  education.  If  it 
is  true  that  the  future  of  a  nation  is  determined  by 
all  the  circumstances  and  agencies  which  to-day 
influence  its  nascent  growth,  surely  the  future 
Church  of  this  country  will  be  the  result  of  the 
leading  creeds  of  the  day — harmonised,  developed, 
and  shaped  under  the  influence  of  Christianity." 
The  appearance  of  societies  such  as  this2  may 

1  Quoted  by  Sir  G.  B.  Frere,  Indian  Missions,  p.  46. 

3  Of  a  similar  sect,  the  Arya  Somaj,  which  has  sprung  up  in 
the  Punjab,  Mr.  J.  Kennedy  states  that  "it  is  at  once  a  protest 
against  Christian  teaching  and  Western  scholarship.  And  yet  the 
Arya  Somaj  has  imbibed  much  of  both.  It  adopts  Western  science, 
and  it  slavishly  copies  Christian  institutions.  It  has  its  schools 
and  colleges,  its  missionaries  and  boards.  ...  It  advocates  (and 
practises)  the  education  of  women.  It  contemplates  the  reduction 
of  all  castes  to  four,  and  the  rise  from  one  caste  to  another  by 
merit.  Idolatry  is  utterly  rejected,  and  the  monotheism  of  the 
Arya  Somaj  is  sharply  defined  "  (The  East  and  the  West,  Vol.  Ill, 
p.  164). 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      59 

seem  to  some  enthusiastic  propagandists  an  un- 
satisfactory and  disheartening  result.  It  is  not 
what  was  aimed  at.  But  is  it  not  for  that  very 
reason  a  powerful  witness  to  the  fruitfulness  and 
vitality  of  the  principles  which  the  missionary 
upholds  ? 

§  15.  The  religion  of  modern  Europe  differs 
from  the  religions  of  Asia  and  Africa  in  being 
a  developing  religion  with  ideals  admittedly  in- 
complete. The  moral  background  to  life  in 
modern  Christendom  differs  from  that  of  Asia  and 
Africa  in  that  the  individual  soul  is  the  moral  unit 
and  not  the  caste  or  clan,  the  two  complementary 
principles  of  cosmopolitanism  and  individualism 
being  combined  in  the  characteristic  Christian 
dicta,  that  a  man  must  be  prepared  to  leave  wife 
and  children  for  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven's  sake, 
and  must  be  ready  to  see  his  children  and  brethren 
in  those  that  do  the  will  of  the  Heavenly  Father. 
The  modern  Christian  view  of  life  differs  more- 
over from  that  of  the  two  more  backward  con- 
tinents in  the  honour  it  pays  to  the  prudential 
virtues,  and  in  the  high  place  it  accords  to  the 
complex  nature  of  man,  whose  physical,  intel- 
lectual, and  moral  development  it  accounts  alike 
worthy  of  attention. 

For  the  sake  of  a  larger  measure  of  the  success 
that  can  be  set  forth  in  statistical  tables  we  shall 
not  follow  the  advice  of  those  who  agree  with 


60  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

Dr.  Oldfield,  by  sacrificing  or  concealing  any  one 
of  these  ethical  divergencies.  But  ought  we,  it  may 
reasonably  be  asked,  deliberately  to  set  about  im- 
planting our  Western  virtues  in  Asiatic  and 
African  communities,  seeking  to  substitute,  with  in- 
discriminate zeal,  our  own  good  qualities  for  theirs? 

The  question  is  not  easy  to  answer.  In  the 
case  of  the  relative  value  of  the  different  moral 
units — the  caste  or  clan,  and  the  individual  soul 
— the  wisest  answer  would  seem  to  be  that  we 
have  not  yet  analysed  the  moral  problems  in- 
volved with  such  thoroughness  as  to  feel  justified 
in  endeavouring  to  revolutionise  existing  Oriental 
forms  of  social  life.  Until  we  know  more  than 
we  know  at  present  we  dare  not  act,  except  with 
experimental  tentativeness,  lest  we  blunder  in  this 
as  we  have  blundered  in  the  past  over  such 
matters  as  Indian  land-tenure. 

But  with  regard  to  the  other  points  of  diver- 
gence, we  can  hardly  do  wrong  in  upholding,  as 
uncompromisingly  as  may  be,  but  without  intoler- 
ance or  insolent  vehemence  of  dogmatising,  our 
own  conception  of  what  ennobles  and  illumines 
life.  We  are  responsible  for  a  conscientious  "  wit- 
nessing "  to  our  reasoned  views  of  truth.  We  are 
not  responsible  for  their  acceptance  by  others. 
And  so  it  is  that  a  certain  self-restraint  in  moral 
propagandism  is  desirable  and,  indeed,  necessary 
in  our  work. 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      61 

The  propagandist  spirit  is  closely  allied  to  a 
spirit  of  self-assertiveness  which  is  by  no  means 
wholly  good.  Those  who  compass  heaven  and 
earth  to  make  a  single  proselyte  are  seldom  of 
the  salt  of  the  earth  themselves.  Their  zeal  is 
largely  due  to  an  unconscious  desire  to  minister  to 
their  own  pride  and  self-gratification.  This  their 
hearers  are  seldom  slow  to  feel,  and  generally 
ready  to  resent ;  and  so  the  wiser  teachers,  being 
more  concerned  for  the  progress  of  the  truth  for 
the  truth's  sake  than  for  their  own  self-satisfaction 
in  the  use  of  a  convincing  dialectic,  content  them- 
selves largely  with  silent  arguments.  Indeed,  a 
little  experience  usually  brings  home  even  to  the 
less  sagacious  that  a  theory  formulated  seldom 
and  without  heat,  but  systematically  acted  on  with 
quiet,  unwavering  consistency,  wins  in  the  long 
run  more  converts  than  one  pressed  in  season 
and  out  of  season  with  the  foolish  zeal  of  the 
partisan.  Not  only,  therefore,  should  the  Chris- 
tian in  non-Christian  lands  abide  steadfastly  by 
his  own  view  of  the  truth  in  the  face  of  unrelaxing 
opposition,  and  be  ready,  in  the  spirit  of  humility 
and  patience,  to  weigh,  in  a  receptive  manner, 
with  a  view  to  the  possible  modification  of  his 
own  theories,  the  conflicting  theories  of  others ; 
but  he  must  be  prepared  at  all  times  to  accept — 
tolerant  in  spite  of  his  inability  to  comprehend 
— the  fact  that  other  ideals  appeal  to  other  people, 


62  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

whom  he  cannot  compel  to  accept  his  view  of  life 
any  more  than  he  can  bring  himself  to  accept 
theirs. 

§  16.  The  work  of  Christianising  the  world 
appears  (in  the  eyes  of  the  enthusiasts)  to  be  pro*- 
gressing  with  disappointing  slowness,  especially 
when  the  vast  machinery  of  modern  Christendom 
is  compared  with  the  feeble  resources  of  the 
evangelists  of  the  first  century.  For  this,  how- 
ever, reasons  may  be  found  not  entirely  discredit- 
able to  the  zeal  of  contemporary  Christianity. 

When  missionary  enterprise  endeavours  to 
spread  what  it  conceives  to  be  distinctively  Christ- 
ian doctrine,  it  finds  itself  not  a  little  hampered 
by  the  immensity  of  the  gulf  between  the 
missionary  mind  and  the  untaught  native  mind. 
Its  comparative  freedom  from  superstitious  and 
crudely  attractive  elements  is,  for  proselytising 
purposes,  not  the  least  of  the  drawbacks  which 
prevent  a  rapid  superficial  success.  Primitive 
Christianity  was  not  thus  hampered;  for  St.  Paul 
accepted  in  the  main  the  philosophical  position 
of  the  mass  of  his  contemporaries,  including  such 
current  Jewish  notions  as  the  ubiquity  of  spiritual 
" principalities"  and  "  powers."  But  now,  when 
the  missionary  finds  himself  hindered  in  his  work 
by  a  belief  in  witchcraft  (say)  held  by  the  native 
elders  of  his  congregation,  his  impulse  is  to 
combat  it  without  mercy,  even  to  the  point  of 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      63 

excommunicating  the  offenders  for  their  belief, 
forgetful  of  the  fact  that  belief  in  witchcraft  was 
current  in  Christian  Europe  a  very  few  years 
back,  if  it  was  not  actually  to  be  counted  an 
integral  part  of  the  Christian  creed. 

The  gulf  which  separates  fetichism  and  similar 
primitive  estimates  of  man's  place  in  the  universe 
from  the  most  fully  developed  Western  views  of 
the  relations  of  God  and  man  is  too  vast  to  be 
covered  in  a  single  leap.  A  general  intellectual 
training  must  go  hand-in-hand  with  moral  and 
religious  training.  The  missionary  cannot,  of 
course,  supply  one  without  incidentally  doing 
something  towards  supplying  the  other,  but  he 
must  settle  to  his  own  satisfaction  on  which  form 
of  work  he  intends  to  lay  the  greater  emphasis — 
whether  to  devote  his  chief  strength  to  the  impart- 
ing of  dogma  in  a  form  acceptable  to  lower-grade 
minds,  along  with  such  moral  training  as  he  can 
combine  with  it,  or  to  give  his  main  efforts  to  build- 
ing up  the  intellectual  capabilities  of  his  disciples. 

This  however  must  not  be  taken  to  imply  a  belief 
that  the  chief  significance  of  the  missionary's  work 
lies  in  the  imparting  of  a  systematic  training  of 
either  kind.  Rather  it  is  the  presence  of  the  human 
being  embodying  in  some  measure  the  higher  ideal 
that  is  all-important.  The  uniqueness  of  Chris- 
tianity among  the  religions  of  the  world  is  due 
largely  to  its  being  the  embodiment  of  a  life,  and 


64  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

not  merely  a  philosophy  of  life.  This  is  the  key- 
stone of  its  strength  even  in  the  most  intel- 
lectually advanced  circles.  But  it  requires  some 
mental  power  to  visualise  a  living  personality 
from  historical  data  merely.  The  untrained  native 
of  the  tropics  has  seldom  this  capacity.  The 
missionary's  life  should  aid  him  in  rilling  in  the 
vague  outlines  of  the  Ideal  Life.  But  none  the 
less  the  missionary  must  choose  (or  his  Society 
for  him)  to  which  of  several  possible  occupations 
he  will  ostensibly  devote  himself;  for  his  charac- 
ter cannot  disclose  itself  in  vacua. 

Moreover,  the  part  of  moral  training  which  can 
most  easily  be  reduced  to  definite  formulas,  and 
thus  taught,  is  the  negative  side.  It  is  easier  to 
prohibit  special  activities  than  to  raise  the  whole 
tone  of  activity  by  the  presentation  of  a  higher 
ideal.  But  if  Christianity  is  to  come  as  a  living 
force  it  must  come  as  a  positive  force,  exalting  and 
ennobling  the  possibilities  of  life.  The  presence 
of  the  missionary,  living,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  the 
life  that  he  would  live  in  a  Christian  environment 
— or  better  still,  if  possible,  the  sight  of  a  group  of 
Christian  laymen  living  lives  of  purposeful  activity 
— is  likely  to  be  of  more  avail  than  the  fullest  course 
of  systematic  instruction  in  Christian  ethics. 

Of  the  African  Negro,  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston 
writes  as  follows  (The  Colonisation  of  Africa, 
pp.  146-7):  "The  Negro  (unless  he  be  Muham- 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY      65 

madanised)  is  easily  converted,  and  as  easily 
relapses  into  gross  superstition  or  a  negation  of 
all  religion,  including  his  former  simple  but 
sound  ideas  of  right  and  wrong.  That  Chris- 
tianity may  become  permanently  rooted  in  a 
Negro  race  it  is  necessary  that  it  be  maintained  by 
a  higher  power  for  a  long  period  as  the  religion 
of  the  State.  The  Negro  kingdoms  which  have 
retained  their  independence  have  usually  lost  their 
Christianity  in  a  recognisable  form.  It  is  not 
so  with  Muhammadanism,  the  explanation  being 
that  Muhammadanism  as  taught  to  the  Negro 
demands  no  sacrifice  of  his  bodily  lusts,  whereas 
Christianity  with  its  restrictions  ends  by  boring 
him,  unless  and  until  his  general  mental  con- 
dition, by  individual  genius  or  generations  of 
transmitted  culture,  reaches  the  level  of  the 
European.  As  instances  of  the  former,  one  might 
mention  some  ten  or  a  dozen  individuals,  living 
at  the  present  time,  who  are  priests  and  deacons 
of  Christianity  in  Africa,  while  for  examples  of 
permanently  rooted  Christianity  as  the  result  of 
inheritance,  it  is  only  necessary  to  point  to  the 
thousands  of  really  good  Negro  men  and  women 
to  be  found  in  the  United  States  and  the  British 
West  Indies." 

This  description  of  the  African's  attitude  towards 
Christianity,  if  truly  drawn — and  it  reads  as  if  it 
might  well  be  true — would  seem  to  point  to  a 


66  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

faulty  bias  in  missionary  teaching,  in  the  direc- 
tion of  making  of  Christianity  mainly  a  code  of 
moral  prohibitions.  If  such  a  bias  exists — it  is  not 
easy  for  a  writer  at  a  distance  to  pronounce  judg- 
ment on  the  point — it  is  a  bias  that  needs  correc- 
tion. It  is  not  by  adding  to  the  list  of  forbidden 
activities  that  Christianity  will  win  the  allegiance 
of  backward  races.  Christianity  came  that  men 
might  have  life,  and  have  it  more  abundantly ; 
and  however  necessary  prohibitions  and  negative 
teaching  may  prove  to  be,  they  can,  no  more  than 
the  mere  extension  of  a  ceremonial  code  dealing 
with  the  keeping  of  Sabbaths  and  the  performance 
of  ecclesiastical  functions,  be  accounted  the  central 
parts  of  a  system  of  Christian  teaching. 

Of  this,  no  doubt,  most,  if  not  all,  missionaries 
will  be  fully  convinced.  The  difficulty  lies  in 
finding  for  the  higher  ideal  of  missionary  work 
the  opportunity  of  practical  expression.  The 
missionary's  character  cannot  disclose  itself  in 
vacuOy  and  the  social  ideals  of  civilised  man  cannot 
be  exemplified  by  a  white  man  living  in  isolation 
among  uncleanly  barbarians.  Both  for  the  sake 
of  giving  the  scattered  whites  the  opportunity 
of  shadowing  forth  the  civilised  man's  customary 
manner  of  life,  and  for  the  sake  of  fostering  the 
nascent  civilisation  of  the  pupil  race,  there  is 
needed  the  gradual  formation  of  a  new  social  and 
political  environment. 


CHAPTER   III 

ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES   IN  RELATION   TO 
THE   TASK    OF   REFORMATION 


„  the    purpose  of   encouraging  the 

A  growth  of  that  fuller  and  more  abund- 
ant life,  of  which  the  Christian  missionary  is  the 
herald  and  forerunner,  there  is  need  for  the  ex- 
penditure of  thoughtful  effort,  controlled  by  the 
highest  form  of  sympathetic  and  imaginative  in- 
sight, in  the  calling  into  existence  of  visible, 
tangible  institutions  to  which  the  nascent  civilisa- 
tion may  attach  itself  as  it  develops.1 

This  may  at  first  sight  appear  but  a  matter  of 
secondary  importance  —  perhaps  even  a  regrettable 
cause  of  distraction  from  better  modes  of  service. 
Many  earnest  minds,  genuinely  interested  in  the 
progress  of  foreign  missions,  deprecate  the  diver- 
sion of  missionary  energy  from  the  more  spiritual 
work  of  personal  influence  over  individuals  to  the 

1  It  is,  in  another  shape,  the  question  of  the  best  means  of 
promoting-  in  the  right  direction  the  progressive  modification  of 
the  human  environment,  which  has  been  already  mentioned  in 
section  5. 

67 


68  WHITE    MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

fostering  of  ecclesiastical,  educational,  and  in- 
dustrial institutions.  No  doubt  much  harm  may 
result,  in  some  cases  has  resulted,  from  undue 
devotion  to  these  and  similar  achievements,  the 
concrete  character  of  which  enables  them  to  serve 
as  tangible  evidence  of  progress,  for  the  satis- 
faction of  the  missionary  himself  in  his  hours  of 
despondency,  or  of  the  community  from  which  he 
expects  material  support.  Spiritual  results  can- 
not be  tabulated  or  quoted  with  convincing  posi- 
tiveness ;  while  statements  as  to  buildings,  and 
statistics  of  meetings  and  membership,  lend 
themselves  easily  to  such  purposes.  This  many 
feel,  and  perhaps  rightly,  to  be  a  danger.  The 
missionary  is  tempted  to  leave  his  proper  task  and 
become  an  organiser  of  schools  and  workshops. 

Yet,  though  this  be  granted,  there  is  much  to 
be  said  on  the  other  side.  The  mere  existence  of 
numerous  institutions  which  may  serve  as  centres 
for  new  expansive  movements,  the  mere  fact  of  a 
whole  population  (as  in  Uganda  or  Madagascar) 
being  superficially  Christianised,  the  mere  spread 
of  elementary  knowledge  of  European  industries 
— all  these  have  a  distinct  and  permanent  value 
which  we  need  not  attempt  to  weigh  critically  in 
the  balances  against  the  deeper  ethical  progress 
made  by  individuals.  Institutionalism  may  be  an 
evil,  but  the  absence  of  abiding  institutions  is  an 
element  of  weakness  likewise.  Indeed,  the  most 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         69 

hopeful  lines  of  civilising  activity  —  the  moral 
training  of  the  young,  and  the  spread  of  an  en- 
nobling literature — depend  almost  entirely  for  their 
success  upon  steady  concerted  effort.  Sporadic 
undertakings  can  achieve  but  little. 

There  is  a  supreme  need,  therefore,  of  building 
up  in  backward  countries  a  suitable  environment, 
intellectual  and  moral,  for  the  growing  mind. 
Without  this,  even  the  picked  spirits  can  progress 
but  feebly,  and  in  a  maimed,  uncertain  fashion. 
The  lecturer  in  an  Indian  University  feels  his  help- 
lessness for  dealing  effectively  with  students  who 
come  from  homes  in  which  there  are  no  books,  who 
have  no  extensive  vernacular  literature  of  a  high 
order  to  which  they  can  turn  for  recreative  study, 
who  have  few  companions  with  whom  they  can 
discuss  serious  questions  intimately.  The  creation 
of  an  inspiring  environment  is  a  hard  task,  and 
necessarily  a  slow  task  —  a  work  for  centuries 
rather  than  for  generations.  Japan's  rapid  rise 
may  seem  to  refute  this  dictum.  But  in  Japan 
there  appears  always  to  have  been  an  atmosphere  of 
profound  ethical  thought,  and  a  deep  culture  which, 
though  alien  to  ours,  enabled  disciplined  minds,  co- 
operating with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  spontaneous 
loyalty,  to  effect  great  results  with  unexampled 
rapidity.  The  rise  of  Japan,  except  in  so  far  as 
international  power  is  concerned,  has  been  no 
rise  at  all,  but  rather  a  slight  change  of  front,  and 


70  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN  ASIA 

an  assertion  of  claims  which  previously  she  had 
been  content  not  to  make.  In  India,  though  per- 
haps no  other  country  has  known  a  grander 
succession  of  reforming  prophets  and  Protestant 
teachers,  the  occasional  waves  of  ethical  pro- 
pagandism  that  have  swept  over  whole  kingdoms 
with  what  might  have  seemed  irresistible  force, 
have,  prior  to  our  own  day,  owing  to  the  absence 
of  permanent  instruments  of  popular  instruction, 
such  as  the  abiding  church  system  of  Europe, 
spent  their  force  and  passed,  leaving  little,  in  the 
shape  of  any  steady  cultivation  of  moral  thought, 
to  mark  their  passage. 

The  environment  that  will  favour  steady  growth 
needs  the  support  of  a  framework  of  definite  in- 
stitutions, which  will  form  as  it  were  the  sup- 
porting skeleton  for  the  living  organism  of  a 
progressive  civilisation.  Spiritual  forces,  how- 
ever high,  require  the  aid  of  material  instruments. 
And  these  instruments,  in  the  shape  of  press  and 
pulpit,  schools  and  laws,  police  and  roads,  to 
strengthen  and  encourage  developing  aspirations 
and  to  retard  any  temporary  retrogression,  it  is 
the  happy  privilege  of  the  strong  peoples  to 
bestow  for  the  benefit  of  the  weak.  By  them- 
selves, uninformed  by  the  aspiring  spirit  which  is 
the  spirit  of  Christianity,  they  may  be  of  but  little 
value.  But  as  the  means  by  which  that  spirit  may 
be  enabled  to  work,  there  are  no  words  too  strong 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         7* 

to  express  their  pre-eminent  and   indispensable 
importance. 

§  1 8.  From  the  consideration  of  this  question  of 
the  building  up  of  helpful  institutions,  we  turn  to 
ask  what  should  be  our  attitude  towards  existing 
institutions,  the  influence  of  which  is  either  posi- 
tively harmful  or  at  least  a  hindrance  to  moral 
progress. 

Let  us  take  as  instances  the  obligation  of  uni- 
versal child-marriage,  and  the  restraints  of  the 
caste-system  in  India.  These  two,  in  the  rapidly 
changing  industrial  environment  of  the  modern 
world,  tend  to  produce  an  atmosphere  of  stagna- 
tion, a  helpless  submission  to  seemingly  inevitable 
suffering,  which  reacts  on  ethical  and  religious 
beliefs.  For  the  uncontrolled  growth  of  popula- 
tion, due  to  the  former,  and  the  hindrances  to  the 
free  flow  of  labour  from  the  decaying  to  the  rising 
industries,  due  to  the  latter,  combine  to  prevent 
the  adjustment  of  labour-supply  to  the  varying 
opportunities  of  a  violently  fluctuating  market. 
In  the  past  they  have  hindered  and  hampered  all 
true  progress.  Progress  has  become,  to  the  Indian 
mind,  almost  unthinkable.  What  has  been  always 
will  be.  It  is  fate  ;  it  is  the  will  of  the  gods  ;  it  is 
anything,  in  short,  but  a  result  of  national  folly, 
for  the  perpetuation  of  which  each  generation  is  in 
its  day  responsible. 

Pessimism  such  as  this  (though  itself  but  the 


72  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

consequence  of  maladjustments  in  the  material  con- 
ditions of  life)  prevents  the  formation  of  helpful 
ethical  ideas — a  point  too  often  overlooked.  For 
we  cannot  conceive  the  Good  apart  from  progress  ; 
as  early  Christianity  recognised  when  it  placed 
optimism  among  the  supreme  duties  of  life — 
bracketing  Hope  with  Faith  and  Love. 

Yet  such  institutions,  evil  as  their  more  con- 
spicuous effects  may  be,  are  often  too  closely 
bound  up  with  the  whole  framework  of  society  for  a 
hasty  frontal  attack  upon  them  to  be  likely  to  suc- 
ceed, or  if  successful  to  be  likely  to  be  beneficial. 
The  good  in  them  may  not  be  easy  to  discover, 
yet  it  is  obvious  that  no  people  could  through 
generation  after  generation  tolerate  social  practices 
that  were  evil  without  qualification.1  Child-marrj- 
age  counteracts  other,  though  perhaps  not  greater, 
mischiefs.  The  caste-system,  wielding  the  dread 
sanctions  of  excommunication  and  outlawry, 
though  it  does  little  to  foster  a  healthy  moral 
sentiment,  undoubtedly  acts  as  a  check  on  utter 
lawlessness.  "  Their  civilisation,"  writes  an  ex- 

1  A  similar  statement  may  also  be  made  with  regard  to  many 
religious  beliefs,  which  at  first  hearing  seem  only  fantastic  com- 
binations of  misguided  folly.  However  grotesque  they  may  be, 
they  are  bound  to  have  a  submerged  basis  of  common  sense,  or 
they  could  never  have  become  widely  accepted.  That  part  of  the 
belief  which  is  put  into  words,  and  evokes  our  ridicule  or  ab- 
horrence, is  often  but  an  extraneous  detail.  The  efficient  part  lies 
lower  down.  A  more  patient  analysis  of  the  creed  may  show  our 
ridicule  to  have  missed  its  mark. 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         73 

perienced  missionary,  "  though  different  from 
ours,  has  a  consistency  as  a  whole  ;  and  we  cannot 
easily  eliminate  certain  parts  and  substitute  for 
them  those  of  our  own  civilisation  without  dis- 
locating the  whole.  Therefore  it  is  often  safer 
and  better  to  conserve  what  seems  to  us  the  lesser 
good  of  their  civilisation  than  to  introduce  what 
seems  the  greater  good  of  our  own."1 

A  premature  assault  on  these  strongholds  of 
evil  is  likely  to  result  in  little  more  than  the  dis- 
abling of  Christianity  for  the  attainment  of  other 
aims.  The  conservative  forces  that  play  their 
part  all  over  the  world,  and  are  in  most  cases 
substantially  healthy  in  their  general  tone,  will 
continue  to  resist  vigorously  the  seemingly  an- 
archical efforts  of  the  reformer  ;  even  as  those 
subjects  of  the  Roman  Empire  whose  sense  of 
civic  duties  was  strongest,  condemned  the  Chris- 
tianity of  early  centuries  (perhaps  not  altogether 
unjustly)  for  its  refusal  to  share  adequately  in  the 
social  and  political  aims  of  the  time.  Destruc- 
tion, even  of  the  worst  institutions,  is  nearly 
always  accompanied  by  incidental  evils,  and  these 
it  should  be  our  aim  to  minimise.  Evolution 
rather  than  revolution  should  be  the  watchword  of 
Christianity,  as  indeed  it  already  is  among  the 
more  broad-minded  of  Christian  missionaries. 
We  must  be  content  to  let  Christian  thought 

1  Mr.  J.  P.  Jones,  India's  Problem  :  Krishna  or  Christ,  p.  225. 


74  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

gradually  permeate  the  non-Christian  world,  in 
such  wise  that  the  latter  may  develop  without 
any  jarring  and  demoralising  break  with  its  past. 
For  continuity,  equally  with  the  introduction  and 
propagation  of  new  ideals,  is  essential  to  national 
development.  There  is  need  of  a  firm  holding  on 
to  the  good  of  the  past,  as  well  as  a  bold  breaking 
away  towards  the  good  of  the  future. 

Making  development  rather  than  substitution 
the  main  element  in  our  civilising  work,  we  shall 
abstain  scrupulously  from  all  needless  destruction 
of  social  institutions.  Some  will  have  to  be  swept 
away  ;  by  force,  if  need  be.  But  these  will  not  be 
numerous,  and  we  shall  find  that  their  number 
diminishes  as  we  subject  them  all  to  careful 
scrutiny.  Meanwhile,  we  should  be  setting  up 
the  institutional  framework  round  which  the 
nascent  civilisation  is  to  form  itself.  But  in 
attempting  this  we  shall  do  well  to  refrain  from 
bringing  it  ostentatiously  into  conflict  with  the 
institutions  we  desire  to  supplant ;  except  where 
the  mass  of  the  people  are  themselves  eager  (as 
the  Negroes  seem  eager)1  to  shake  themselves 

1  This  is  admitted  even  by  hostile  writers.  Mr.  Roderick 
Jones  in  an  article  on  "  The  Black  Peril  in  South  Africa  "  (Nine- 
teenth Century,  May,  1904),  declares  that  "  the  natives  are 
awakening  from  the  slumber  of  centuries,  and  there  is  no  more 
remarkable  feature  of  this  awakening  than  their  almost  insatiable 
thirst  for  knowledge.  Cape  Colony  and  the  territories  are 
literally  peppered  with  native  schools,  the  territories  alone  having 
several  hundreds." 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         75 

free  from  the  evil  heritage  of  their  ancestral 
traditions. 

Yet  however  cautiously  we  proceed  there  will 
remain  social  institutions  whose  influence  is  such 
that  they  must  be  deliberately  undermined  and 
ultimately  attacked  openly.  Already  by  the 
crushing  out  of  the  slave-trade  and  the  sup- 
pression of  such  evils  as  widow-burning  we  have 
taken  a  few  steps  in  the  desired  direction.  But 
our  policy  has  not  been  sufficiently  constant  or 
sufficiently  disinterested  for  us  to  achieve  enough 
to  deserve  any  large  measure  of  applause  or 
gratitude.  We  have  destroyed  some  few  evil 
institutions,  but  it  has  been  by  erratic,  sporadic 
effort,  and  we  have  seldom  taken  sufficient  care 
to  replace  them  by  institutions  of  a  healthy  kind 
likely  to  aid  the  lower  races'  advance. 

The  failure  to  do  so  is  natural,  as  it  is  not  easy 
so  to  analyse  the  complex  conditions  of  our  own 
and  others'  manner  of  life  as  to  be  able  to  identify 
with  certitude  the  main  forces  that  make  therein 
for  good  or  for  evil.  The  pupil,  moreover, 
whether  man  or  nation,  tends  to  copy  what  is  on 
the  surface  (the  English  system  of  Parliamentary 
government,  say)  without  studying  its  presup- 
positions (which  in  this  particular  case  must 
include  a  long-continued  training  in  the  tasks  of 
local  administration  and  responsibility  in  matters 
of  justice  and  finance). 


76  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

Thus  it  is  that  our  ecclesiastical  and  educational 
systems  when  transplanted  to  other  continents 
remain  largely  exotics,  with  a  touch  of  the 
grotesque  in  their  appearance  even  where  most 
flourishing.  Is  not  this  because  we  have  been 
too  eager  for  brilliant  results,  too  prone  to  spend 
our  energies  in  building  at  the  top  before  a  proper 
foundation  has  been  laid,  too  bent  on  dealing 
first  with  " higher"  matters  rather  than  with 
the  formation  of  simple  industrial  organisations 
fostering  a  regular  life  of  sober  activity,  and 
schools  giving  a  training  in  the  more  elementary 
requirements  of  citizenship?  We  need  to  begin 
lower  down,  and  spend  more  thought  on  the  funda- 
mentals of  civilised  life. 

§  19.  But  whether  we  devote  our  energies  to  the 
destroying  of  the  institutions  that  make  for  evil,  or 
to  the  building  up  of  those  that  make  for  good,  we 
must  beware  of  sparing  too  much  of  our  attention 
to  the  immediate  results  of  our  work,  or  to  its 
visible  effects  in  the  promotion  of  happiness. 
Transitional  periods  are  almost  always  ugly  and 
often  pitifully  grotesque.  The  shortcomings  of 
the  partially  trained  Negro  or  Hindu,  his  mis- 
estimation  of  his  own  importance,  his  loss  of 
some  attractive  qualities  and  his  inadequate  com- 
prehension of  the  virtues  which  should  take 
their  place,  exasperate  the  colonial  or  Anglo- 
Indian,  who  has  not  patience  to  wait  for  the 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES          77 

long-deferred  harvest  which  his  children's  children 
may  reap. 

Many  who  start  as  enthusiasts  in  the  cause  of 
the  down-trodden  peoples  are  tempted  to  abandon 
their  efforts  in  disgust,  at  the  first  signs  of  incon- 
gruity in  the  native's  attempts  to  adopt  European 
ideals.  Most  of  those  Europeans  who  make  their 
livelihood  in  our  Asiatic  or  African  dependencies 
are  inconvenienced  by  the  spread  of  a  superficial 
"  education,"  which  renders  previously  obsequi- 
ous Hindus  or  Kafirs  discontented  or  insolent. 
Accordingly  they  are  always  ready  to  turn  any 
incongruities  of  half-development  to  account, 
ridiculing  every  attempt  of  the  subject  races  to 
raise  themselves  by  clumsily  imitative  methods, 
and  finding  much  food  for  merriment  in  the 
vagaries  of  Indian  " Congresses,"  or  of  the  Ethio- 
pian Church. 

When,  however,  the  whole  question  is  looked  at 
in  the  abstract  and  from  a  distance,  one  cannot 
but  realise  the  necessity  of  such  absurdities  appear- 
ing. We  have  to  carry  upward  from  a  state  of 
undisciplined  childhood,  peoples  whose  only 
morality  was  blind  obedience  to  caste  or  tribal 
regulations,  and  who,  perhaps,  knew  nothing  of 
regular  industry.  We  must  train  these  folk,  simul- 
taneously, in  the  elements  of  civilised  life — in  the 
habit  of  obeying  moral  laws  unsanctioned  by  caste 
or  custom,  in  habits  of  social  co-operation  and  of 


78  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

systematic  labour  at  agriculture,  or  in  other  indus- 
tries— endeavouring  at  the  same  time  to  impress 
upon  them  ecclesiastical  dogma  (perhaps)  and 
what  must  seem  to  them  an  uncouth  church  cere- 
monial ;  and  finally  seeking  to  instil  into  them  a 
sense  of  duty  as  regards  such  minor  matters  of  citi- 
zenship as  service  on  local  boards  and  juries,  and 
the  giving  of  evidence  in  courts  of  law.  In  what 
order  is  such  an  all-embracing  series  of  changes  to 
be  brought  about?  Can,  indeed,  any  one  of  the 
proposed  steps  in  advance  be  taken  until  most  of 
the  others  are  taken  ?  There  is  no  inevitable 
sequence  of  grades  through  which  the  advance  is 
to  be  made,  as  one  goes  from  Euclid's  first  pro- 
position to  the  forty-seventh.  Rather,  each  single 
step  is  reciprocally  necessary  to  each  of  the 
others.1  As  soon  as  a  step  is  taken  in  one  direc- 
tion its  inadequacy  by  itself  is  at  once  perceived. 
A  hundred  other  lines  of  progress  must  be  at- 
tempted simultaneously.  Meanwhile,  how  can  the 
pupil  fail  to  appear  grotesque?  An  oratorical 
Bengalee,  declaiming  against  British  tyranny,  but 

1  The  tendency  (noted  by  many  writers)  of  the  African  Negro  to 
degenerate,  when  not  subjected  to  the  continued  influence  of  con- 
tact with  higher  races,  may  be  due  to  the  unequal  stimulus  given 
by  civilisation  to  certain  of  his  faculties  as  compared  with  others ; 
the  reactionary  pull  of  the  undeveloped  faculties  (which  have 
evolved  in  such  wise  as  to  be  best  adapted  to  a  non-civilised 
environment  and  exert  a  strong  bias  in  favour  of  returning  to  it) 
proves  too  strong  a  factor  in  his  life  when  not  counterbalanced  by 
external  forces. 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         79 

unwilling  to  do  his  part  in  bringing  about  some 
municipal  reform  ;  an  emancipated  Negro  in  a  top 
hat,  capable  of  playing  the  piano  but  incapable  of 
earning  his  own  living — such  figures  lend  them- 
selves readily  to  caricature,  and  make  the  reformer's 
enthusiasm  seem  fanatically  misguided. 

The  temperate  advocate  of  reform,  however, 
will  accept  such  manifestations  as  but  the  natural 
outcome  of  the  conditions.  His  is  not  the  hasty 
creed  of  early  nineteenth  -  century  liberalism, 
which  imagined  that  the  training  of  a  couple  of 
generations  might  place  the  Negro  on  a  par, 
mor-"  and  intellectually,  with  the  foremost 
natuns  of  the  day  ;  but  a  reasonable  belief  in  the 
potential  equality  of  all  mankind  (as  sharing  alike 
in  a  capacity  for  unlimited  development), — a 
radically  different  conception,  which  only  mis- 
interpretation can  render  ridiculous  in  the  eyes 
of  unprejudiced  thinkers. 

But  apart  from  these  ungenerous  critics,  there 
are  others  of  a  more  sympathetic  character  who  yet 
deprecate  unflagging  effort  for  the  uplifting  of  the 
dependent  races,  arguing  that  it  is  little  likely  to 
increase  the  sum-total  of  the  happiness  of  human- 
kind. And  if,  through  lack  of  faith  in  the  ulti- 
mate Tightness  of  the  laws  of  the  moral  universe, 
we  allow  ourselves  to  be  guided  solely  by  utili- 
tarian criteria  of  this  sort,  we  can  hardly  do  other 
than  come  to  the  same  conclusion.  For  the  pro- 


8o  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

motion  of  human  happiness  is  a  gain  too  remote 
and  too  problematical  ever  to  be  a  convincing 
motive  where  faith  is  weak.  If  we  are  to  advance 
at  all  it  must  be  in  another  spirit  than  this. 

Yet,  as  criticism  directed  against  a  certain  kind 
of  short-sighted  enthusiasm,  this  pessimistic  treat- 
ment of  the  matter  is  not  without  its  value.  For 
not  seldom  the  sensitiveness  of  the  cultured  re- 
former prevents  him  from  seeing  things  as  they 
really  are.  In  "  putting  himself  in  another's 
place  "  he  goes  at  once  too  far  and  not  far  enough. 
He  imagines  that  others  suffer  as  he  himself  would 
suffer  if  he  were  compelled  to  live  as  they.  When, 
however,  he  gets  an  opportunity  of  observing 
more  closely  the  light-hearted  lives  of  those  to 
whom  he  has  given  his  pity  (whether  in  the  East 
End  of  London  or  in  the  ports  of  China,  it  matters 
little)  he  is  completely  taken  aback.  Frequently, 
in  the  reaction,  he  loses  all  further  interest  in  his 
philanthropic  fancies.  Rarely  indeed  would  it  be 
the  case  that  the  philanthropist  of  the  study  could 
catch  his  first  glimpse  of  the  poverty-stricken 
black  races — perhaps  a  swarm  of  chattering  men, 
women,  and  boys,  dressed  indistinguishably,  dis- 
charging the  coal  of  a  tramp  steamer  at  Port 
Said,  smothered  in  dirt  from  head  to  foot,  shriek- 
ing, laughing,  sky-larking,  like  half-human 
children,  chattering  interminably,  thoroughly 
contented  with  the  life  of  the  moment  and  utterly 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         81 

neglectful  of  the  morrow — and  seeing  such  a  sight 
feel  no  lessening  of  his  sympathies  at  the  shock 
of  it.  To  raise  them  in  the  scale  of  humanity  will 
hardly  mean  an  immediate  increase  in  their  enjoy- 
ment of  life.  How  could  it? 

§  20.  As  in  that  other  branch  of  philosophy 
which  investigates  the  conditions  which  affect  the 
well-being  of  nations,  and  claims  for  itself  the  title 
of  '*  Political  Economy"  (more  naturally  applic- 
able, one  would  think,  to  the  discussion  of  such 
problems  as  ours),  there  is  need  for  us  to  be  per- 
petually on  our  guard  to  avoid  confusing  "  long- 
period  "  and  "  short-period  "  results. 

Some  writers  and  thinkers  are  mainly  concerned 
with  the  immediate  future,  and  others  with  matters 
affecting  the  permanent  welfare  of  humanity.  But 
both  may  be  doing  work  that  is  useful  in  their 
day  and  generation  ;  and  while  the  conclusions 
of  the  former  may  at  times  seem  diametrically 
opposed  to  those  of  the  latter,  both  may  be  true 
alike,  but  with  different  limitations,  and  sup- 
pressed "saving  clauses"  of  a  different  character. 

With  the  closet  optimist  we  must  agree  that  it 
is  only  as  a  consequence  of  the  long-continued  con- 
tact of  higher  and  lower  that  the  lower  "in  the 
long  run  "  can  be  expected  to  achieve  its  salva- 
tion ;  and  also  that  it  is  through  the  conscientious 
handling  of  the  perplexing  tasks  of  guiding  and 
restraining  the  lower,  that  the  higher  may  "in 


82  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

the  long  run "  best  hope  to  widen  its  ethical 
experiences  and  rise  yet  higher  again.  But  the 
statesman,  while  not  forgetting  what  lies  nearer 
the  distant  horizon,  and  taking  care  not  to  waste 
his  strength  by  striking  at  incidental  symptoms 
and  inevitable  transitional  ills,  must  give  a  larger 
share  of  attention  to  the  short-period  problems ; 
and  these  are  by  no  means  simple.  For  the  mere 
contact  of  higher  and  lower  brings  its  moral 
drawbacks  as  well  as  its  moral  gains.  The  higher 
may  be  stimulated  by  the  new  responsibilities ; 
but  often  the  more  conspicuous  results  are  of  a 
regrettable  character  ;  for  the  status  of  superiority 
brings  its  temptations  as  well  as  its  ennobling 
stimuli. 

Both  in  the  black  belt  of  the  United  States  and 
in  South  Africa  the  whites  have  largely  lost  the 
habit  of  performing  manual  labour,  and  acquired 
the  habit  of  despising  it.1  Contempt  for  the 
inferior  race  combines  with  a  natural  physical 
aversion,  and  while  the  crimes  of  the  lower  against 
the  higher  necessitate  legislation  of  a  repressive 
character  (passing  easily  into  legislation  which 
offends  against  elementary  conceptions  of  justice), 
or  even  arouse  a  fiendish  resentment  which  blazes 
out  in  the  degrading  practice  of  Lynch  Law,  the 
crimes  of  the  higher  against  the  persons  of  the 
lower  come  to  seem  no  crimes,  or  at  worst 

1  See  e.g.  Mr.  Bryce's  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  pp.  438  seq. 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         83 

offences  on  a  level  with  cruelty  to  animals. 
When  a  Clive  can  feel  justified  in  stooping  to 
Oriental  methods  of  intrigue  in  dealing  with 
Oriental  intriguers,  the  rank  and  file  of  European 
conquerors  and  colonists  feel  little  shame  in 
going  yet  further.  Thus  the  moral  sense  of  the 
European  is  blunted  —  whether  it  be  with  the 
bestiality  of  Africa,  or  with  the  treachery  of  Asia 
that  he  comes  into  contact — and  the  possibility  of 
the  higher  exerting  any  beneficent  influence  over 
the  lower  passes  away. 

The  weakness  of  the  lower  races  is  at  once  a 
temptation  and  a  source  of  irritation  to  their 
neighbours.  "  Even  between  civilized  peoples, 
such  as  Germans  and  Russians,  or  Spaniards  and 
Frenchmen,  there  is  a  disposition  to  be  unduly 
annoyed  by  traits  and  habits  which  are  not  so 
much  culpable  in  themselves  as  distasteful  to  men 
constructed  on  different  lines.  This  sense  of 
annoyance  is  naturally  more  intense  towards  a 
race  so  widely  removed  from  the  modern  European 
as  the  Kafirs  are.  Whoever  has  travelled  among 
people  of  a  race  greatly  weaker  than  his  own  must 
have  sometimes  been  conscious  of  an  impatience 
or  irritation  which  arises  when  the  native  fails  to 
understand  or  neglects  to  obey  the  command 
given.  The  sense  of  his  superior  intelligence  and 
energy  of  will  produces  in  the  European  a  sort  of 
tyrannous  spirit,  which  will  not  condescend  to 


84  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

argue  with  the  native,  but  overbears  him  by  sheer 
force,  and  is  prone  to  resort  to  physical  coercion. 
Even  just  men,  who  have  the  deepest  theoretical 
respect  for  human  rights,  are  apt  to  be  carried 
away  by  the  consciousness  of  superior  strength, 
and  to  become  despotic  if  not  harsh"  (Bryce, 
Impressions  of  South  Africa,  p.  442). 

This  tyrannous  attitude  is,  indeed,  most  notice- 
able in  the  case  of  those  whites  who  have  little 
else  on  which  to  pride  themselves  except  their 
colour.  But  few  altogether  escape  it.  It  combines 
with  that  aversion  for  men  of  different  colour,  un- 
reasoning, but  not  necessarily  unreasonable,  which 
is  one  of  the  most  deep-seated  instincts  of  human 
nature.  Even  some  of  the  dark  races  (the  Zulus  for 
instance)  are  said  to  feel  it  for  the  European,  while 
it  is  probablyalso  one  of  the  causes  which  originated 
and  one  of  the  buttresses  which  sustain  the  caste 
system  of  India.  It  is  not  of  course  to  be  hastily 
deplored  as  a  wholly  undesirable  "failing."  With- 
out it  the  evolution  of  the  higher  stocks  might  con- 
ceivably have  been  less  rapid.  It  is  perhaps  most 
strongly  marked,  moreover,  among  the  more  refined 
individuals  of  our  own  stock  (the  gentler  spirits  who 
endeavour  to  avoid  all  display  of  a  feeling  which 
they  are  inclined  to  believe  unjust)  than  it  is  among 
those  who  in  America  or  South  Africa  make  a  pose 
of  their  desire  for  "  race  purity,"  but  in  fact  prefer 
black  servants  to  white,  and  in  times  past  did  not 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES          85 

scruple  to  maintain  the  servile  practice  of  con- 
cubinage. With  these  the  governing  impulse  is 
rather  a  desire  for  domination  over  the  weaker 
than  a  dislike  of  contact  with  them.1 

A  similar  contrast  may  be  noticed  between  the 
more  and  the  less  refined  of  European  peoples. 
The  South  European  intermarries  with  dark  races 
much  more  freely  than  the  Teuton.  The  Goanese, 
for  instance,  form  quite  a  nation  of  Indo-Portu- 
guese  origin,  while  South  and  Central  America 
are  largely  populated  by  people  of  mixed  blood  ; 
but  in  the  United  States  it  is  said  now  to  be  quite 
unusual  for  there  to  be  even  any  illegitimate  off- 
spring of  black  and  white  parents. 

If  this  feeling  spread  it  might  be  thought 
possible  that  a  more  tolerant  mutual  attitude 
should  follow ;  the  white  and  dark  living  side  by 
side,  rendering  mutual  services,  abstaining  from 
unnecessary  social  competition,  each  feeling  so 
morally  remote  from  the  other  as  to  be  under  no 
temptation,  the  one  to  give  expression  to  that 
scorn  for  the  lower  orders  which  rouses  their 
natural  hostility,  or  the  other  by  partially  success- 

1  Mr.  J.  A.  Hobson  in  his  article  "The  Negro  Problem  in 
the  United  States  "  (Nineteenth  Century •,  October,  1903),  speaks 
of  it  as  a  feeling  "  inherited  from  the  time  of  slavery  and  hardly 
impaired  by  the  process  of  two  generations."  There  is  not 
necessarily  anything  "  inherited  "  in  the  feeling,  however.  It  is 
strongly  marked  in  the  Anglo-Indian  world,  where  it  is  not 
uncommon  to  meet  persons  in  whom  dread  of  native  disrespect 
amounts  almost  to  a  disease. 


86          WHITE  MAN'S  WORK   IN  ASIA 

ful  emulation  to  excite  the  indignant  bitterness  of 
the  inferior  members  of  the  higher  orders.  But 
the  weight  of  thoughtful  opinion  seems  to  be 
opposed  to  the  possibility  of  this  as  a  permanent 
solution  of  the  problem.1 

Where,  as  in  the  Southern  area  of  the  United 
States,  the  white  man  considers  it  advisable  to 
hold  himself  aloof  from  the  life  of  the  Negro,  the 
latter  has  little  opportunity  of  raising  his  aims  in 
life.  Therefore  he  remains,  because  untaught, 
apparently  unteachable.  The  unconstitutional 
violence  which  prevents  him  from  exercising  his 
nominal  rights  as  a  citizen  makes  it  impossible 
for  him  to  recognise  in  the  white  man's  ways  a 

1  Cf.  Mr.  J.  A.  Hobson's  "The  Negro  Problem  in  the  United 
States"  (Nineteenth  Century ',  October,  1903).  "This  unique 
phenomenon  is  presented  by  a  Southern  city  —  two  races 
of  free  citizens  endowed  by  law  with  political  and  civil  equality 
occupying  the  same  soil,  walking  the  same  streets,  but 
destitute  of  all  personal  sympathy  with  one  another  and  of  all 
genuine  human  contact.  Such  a  civilisation  has  not  in  it  the 
elements  of  stability."  Cf.  also  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells'  admirable  dis- 
cussion of  the  "Tragedy  of  Colour  "  in  his  The  Future  in  America 
(pp.  259-281).  "Racial  differences,"  he  says,  "seem  to  me 
to  exasperate  intercourse  unless  people  have  been  elaborately 
trained  to  ignore  them.  Uneducated  men  are  as  bad  as  cattle  in 
persecuting  all  that  is  different  among  themselves.  The  most 
miserable  and  disorderly  countries  of  the  world  are  the  countries 
where  two  races,  two  inadequate  cultures,  keep  a  jarring  continu- 
ous separation.  .  .  .  [Mr.  Booker  Washington]  dreams  of  a 
coloured  race  of  decent  and  inagressive  men,  silently  giving  the 
lie  to  all  the  legends  of  their  degradation.  They  will  have  their 
own  doctors,  their  own  lawyers,  their  own  capitalists,  their  own 
banks — because  the  whites  desire  it  so.  But  will  the  whites 
endure  even  so  submissive  a  vindication  as  that  ?  .  .  .  " 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         87 

superior  order  of  justice  ;  while  the  fury  of  the 
mobs  of  lynchers  degrades  both  the  white  man 
and  the  black.  "  Violence,  when  once  it  breaks 
out,  is  apt  to  spread,  because  the  men  of  each 
race  take  sides  in  any  tumult,  and  apt  to  be 
accompanied  by  cruelty,  because  pity  is  blunter 
towards  those  who  stand  outside  the  racial  or 
social  pale,  and  the  passions  of  a  racial  conflict 
sweep  all  but  the  gentlest  natures  away.  Every 
outrage  on  one  side  provokes  an  outrage  on  the 
other  ;  and  if  a  series  of  outrages  occur,  each  race 
bands  itself  together  for  self-defence,  awaiting 
attack,  and  probably  provoking  attack  by  the 
alarm  its  combination  inspires."1  Thus  the 
vicious  circle  of  treating  an  inferior  as  necessarily 
and  hopelessly  inferior  keeps  him  continuously 
inferior.  And  the  already  difficult  problem  is 
rendered  less  and  less  easily  soluble  as  a  con- 
sequence of  the  rising  barriers  of  hatred  and  envy 
that  thrust  the  two  races  yet  further  apart. 

§  21.  But  worse,  perhaps,  in  their  ultimate  con- 
sequences than  envy  and  hatred  between  higher 
and  lower,  are  the  scorn  of  the  former  and  the 
resultant  self-contempt  and  despair  of  the  latter. 
In  the  presence  of  the  arrogant  white,  flaunting 
insultingly  his  superior  powers,  the  despised 
blacks  degenerate  into  baser  beings  than  they 
would  otherwise  have  become.  "  Dirt  in  his  eyes, 

1  Mr.  Bryce,  Romanes  Lecture,  p.  30. 


88  WHITE   MAN'S  WORK    IN   ASIA 

they  soon  become  as  dirt  in  their  own."1  And 
they  become  positively  enfeebled  by  their  con- 
sciousness of  inferiority.  "  If  we  hear  of  a  race 
like  the  Tasmanians  or  the  Red  Indians  dis- 
appearing quietly,  under  no  stress  of  persecution, 
no  massacres  or  poisonings,  we  are  perhaps 
inclined  to  look  upon  the  process  as  a  harmless 
and  painless  one.  It  is  not  so.  Those  men  and 
women  who  look  broken-down  by  the  time  they 
are  thirty,  who  leave  no  children  behind  them, 
who  have  forgotten  their  fishing  and  their  hunting 
and  their  old  rude  forms  of  art,  who  sit  (as  I  have 
seen  one»or  two)  with  heads  bowed,  doing  nothing, 
saying  nothing,  in  a  world  in  which  there  is  no 
longer  anything  they  can  call  their  own — those 
men  and  women  are,  I  think,  engaged  in  a  process 
that  we  sometimes  read  about  but  do  not  often 
see  :  they  are  dying  of  despair."2 

With  the  inborn  aversion  felt  for  the  man  of 
different  physical  appearance,  and  the  hostile 
sentiments  that  are  fostered  by  short-sighted 
statesmanship,  is  often  combined  a  cruelly  selfish 
determination  to  avoid  all  economic  competition  be- 
tween members  of  the  white  and  the  coloured  races. 
Mr.  Bryce  mentions  the  existence  of  a  white  man's 
prejudice  which  prevents  the  employment  of 
Kafirs  as  drivers  or  stokers  of  locomotives, 

1  Mr.  Gilbert  Murray,  Liberalism  and  the  Empire,  p.  148. 

2  Ibid.  p.  149. 


ADMINISTRATIVE   DIFFICULTIES         89 

though  they  are  admittedly  capable  of  performing 
the  work  well.  The  childish  action  of  the  Aus- 
tralian legislature  with  regard  to  the  mail  contracts 
is  fresh  in  everybody's  mind.  Mr.  Booker  Wash- 
ington in  his  The  Future  of  the  American  Negro >, 
gives  pathetic  instances  of  the  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  the  black  man's  getting  an  industrial  train- 
ing, and  his  still  greater  difficulty — with  white 
employees  refusing  to  work  alongside  of  him — of 
finding  employment,  and  his  frequent  demoralisa- 
tion in  consequence  of  the  disheartening  handicaps 
of  his  career. 

In  so  far  as  these  obstacles  thrust  in  the  way  of 
the  dark  peoples  are  due  to  a  selfish  spirit  of  self- 
protection  against  competition,  argument  against 
them  is  mostly  futile.  Nothing  but  the  sternest 
action  on  the  part  of  sovereign  power  is  likely  to 
be  of  any  avail  in  checking  such  abuses,  and  even 
the  strongest  legislative  authority  must  often  fail 
of  effecting  its  purpose  until  backed  up  by  a 
vigorous  local  sentiment  in  favour  of  fair  treat- 
ment. This  is  one  of  the  weightiest  reasons  for 
withholding  from  the  white  men  on  the  spot  the 
full  power  of  dealing  as  they  choose  with  their 
weaker  neighbours.1  The  local  expert  has  no 

1  Cf.  Mr.  Kidd's  Control  of  the  Tropics,  p.  57.  "  The  one  under- 
lying principle  of  success  in  any  future  relationship  to  the  tropics 
is  to  keep  those  who  administer  the  government  which  represents 
our  civilisation  in  direct  and  intimate  contact  with  the  standards 
of  that  civilisation  at  its  best ;  and  to  keep  the  acts  of  the  govern- 


90  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

doubt  much  knowledge  of  the  character,  expecta- 
tions and  beliefs  of  the  native,  which  the  "  senti- 
mental "  philanthropist  in  the  home-land  has  not,1 
and  the  interference  of  the  latter  may  thus  cause 
much  temporary  mischief.  But  over  against  this 
evil  we  must  set  the  alternative  evil  of  allowing 
short-sighted  people,  rendered  impatient  by  the 
irritation  of  continually  dealing  with  their  incom- 

ment  itself  within  the  closest  range  of  that  influence,  often  irk- 
some, sometimes  even  misleading,  but  always  absolutely  vital, — 
the  continual  scrutiny  of  the  public  mind  at  home."  Cf.  also 
Mr.  Gilbert  Murray's  Liberalism  and  the  Empire,  p.  156  seq. 

1  It  should  be  added,  however,  that  the  local  resident  seldom 
takes  the  trouble  to  become  in  any  real  sense  a  local  expert.  He 
has  the  means  of  obtaining  unbiassed  information  and  formulating 
a  sane  judgment.  But  ignorance  and  prejudice  often  render  him 
less  of  an  expert  than  the  average  stay-at-home  politician  who 
feels  some  slight  interest  in  the  question.  In  America,  according 
to  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  "usually  one  is  told  with  great  gravity  that 
the  problem  of  colour  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  that  we  have  to 
consider,  and  the  conversation  then  breaks  up  into  discursive 
anecdotes  and  statements  about  black  people.  One  man  will 
dwell  upon  the  uncontrollable  violence  of  a  black  man's  evil 
passions  (in  Jamaica  and  Barbados  coloured  people  form  an 
overwhelming  proportion  of  the  population,  and  they  have  be- 
haved in  an  exemplary  fashion  for  the  last  thirty  years) ;  another 
will  dilate  upon  the  incredible  stupidity  of  the  full-blooded  negro 
(during  my  stay  in  New  York  the  prize  for  oratory  at  Columbia 
University,  oratory  which  was  the  one  redeeming  charm  of 
Daniel  Webster,  was  awarded  to  a  Zulu  of  unmitigated  black- 
ness) ;  a  third  will  speak  of  his  physical  offensiveness,  his  peculiar 
smell,  which  necessitates  his  social  isolation  (most  well-to-do 
Southerners  are  brought  up  by  negro  'mammies').  .  .  ."  "My 
globe-trotting  impudence"  (he  continues)  "will  seem,  no  doubt,  to 
mount  to  its  zenith  when  I  declare  that  hardly  any  Americans  at 
all  seem  to  be  in  possession  of  the  elementary  facts  in  relation  to 
this  question"  (The  Future  in  America,  pp.  261-262). 


ADMINISTRATIVE  DIFFICULTIES        91 

petent,  untrustworthy,  and  treacherous  neigh- 
bours, to  pronounce  as  judges  in  their  own  cause. 
The  factory  owners  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century 
were  not  necessarily  of  worse  disposition  than 
their  average  contemporaries,  but  the  nation  had 
to  take  from  their  hands  the  right  to  deal  as  they 
chose  with  their  factory  children  and  even  to  some 
extent  with  their  adult  hands.  The  native  by  the 
side  of  the  colonial  is  in  many  ways  as  helpless  as 
a  child  among  adults,  and  worse  handicapped  than 
the  child  in  that  he  has  no  superficial  attractive- 
ness, his  vices — cunning,  laziness,  treachery, 
blood-thirstiness  perhaps — being  the  qualities  in 
him  of  which  the  white  man  is  naturally  most  fully 
cognisant.  The  factory  question  and  the  colonial 
question  have  features  in  common.  No  more  in 
the  one  case  than  in  the  other  can  we  allow  tem- 
porary interests  and  local  or  party  interests  to 
override  the  permanent  interests  of  humanity. 

In  justice,  however,  to  the  colonial,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  it  is  not  always  a  policy  of  mere 
selfishness  which  calls  into  being  hostile  legisla- 
tion detrimental  to  the  interests  of  the  coloured 
alien.  The  white  man  realises  that  the  future  of 
the  world  lies  mainly  with  him  and  his.  Even 
when  his  utterances  are  most  brutally  contrary  to 
the  spirit  of  justice,  it  is  possible  that  he  is  follow- 
ing, to  some  extent,  unformulated  dictates  of  an 
instinct  for  the  good  of  humanity  which,  one- 


92  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN  ASIA 

sided  though  they  may  be,  are  yet  not  wholly 
without  justification.  For  as  guardians  of  the 
habitable  earth  we  cannot  without  neglect  of  our 
responsibilities  allow  the  unoccupied  lands  in 
America  and  Australia  to  be  filled  up  by  a  rapidly 
increasing  population  of  Indians  and  Chinese  to 
the  exclusion  of  the  descendants  of  our  own  race. 
Such  a  policy  of  laissez-faire,  by  permitting  the 
level  of  civilisation  to  fall  far  below  what  it  might 
be  with  the  European  stock  spreading  as  widely 
as  character  and  climate  will  allow,  would  right- 
fully expose  us  to  the  bitter  comments  of  future 
generations. 

This  whole  question,  however,  of  the  economic 
relations  of  populations  that  have  accepted  different 
standards  of  comfort  is  a  large  subject  that  calls 
for  more  detailed  treatment  in  a  separate  chapter. 


CHAPTER   IV 

ECONOMIC  AND   POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS 

A  MONG  the  problems  of  world-wide  im- 
'  JLJL  portance  which  loom  already  above  the 
horizon,  and  will  soon  call  peremptorily  for 
statesmanlike  consideration,  must  be  placed  a 
group  of  questions  which  may,  in  the  broader 
sense  of  that  word,  be  classed  as  " economic." 
They  are  questions  connected  with  the  divergent 
"  standards  of  life "  maintained  by  races  on 
different  levels  of  culture,  which,  after  having 
long  lived  segregated  lives  practically  unin- 
fluenced by  one  another,  are  now  suddenly 
brought  into  the  closest  economic  relations. 

For  the  sake  of  clearness  in  dealing  with  this 
group  of  questions,  it  will  be  necessary  for  a 
moment  to  turn  back  to  glance  at  some  theories 
first  clearly  enunciated  by  the  " classical"  econo- 
mists of  the  early  nineteenth  century — Malthus 
and  Ricardo. 

Malthus's  great  contribution  to  economic  thought 
owed  its  importance  to  its  being  the  first  treatise 

93 


94  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

to  lay  adequate  emphasis  on  the  elasticity  of  the 
tendency  to  growth  on  the  part  of  different 
populations,  and  to  correlate  the  laws  of  their 
growth  with  the  conditions  of  food  production. 
There  is  perhaps  little  in  his  work  that  can  be 
called  an  absolutely  new,  unheralded  contribution 
to  the  history  of  thought.  But  the  importance 
of  population  questions  had  never  before  been 
thrown  into  such  a  clear  light.  Malthus  forced 
us  to  see  something  of  the  significance  of  the 
insistent  tendency  of  population  to  expand  in- 
definitely ;  suggested  the  consequences  of  such  a 
tendency  if  it  could  be  conceived  as  working 
unchecked  by  any  counteracting  forces  such  as 
those  which  are  actually  effective ;  and  made 
some  preliminary  contributions  towards  the  study 
of  those  forces.  He  set  before  our  consideration 
the  two  sets  of  checks — the  positive  and  the  pre- 
ventive— on  the  unlimited  growth  of  population. 
The  latter  includes  more  especially  the  prudential 
motives  which  restrain  people  from  obeying  freely 
the  procreative  instinct,  and  also  the  action  of 
vice  and  misery  in  making  the  procreative  instinct 
ineffective.  The  positive  checks,  such  as  wars 
and  famines,  are  those  that  slay  the  undesired 
increments  of  population  after  they  have  come 
into  existence.  Malthus  pointed  out,  moreover, 
the  comparative  powerfulness  of  the  tendency  to 
increase,  in  contrast  with  the  slowness  with  which 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  95 

the  means  of  subsistence  can  be  multiplied ; 
summing  up  in  the  attractive,  though  not  very 
accurate,  phrase,  that  food  supplies  tend  to  grow 
in  an  arithmetical,  population  in  a  geometrical 
ratio. 

Ricardo  added  to  the  Malthusian  doctrine  the 
enunciation  of  what  came  later  to  be  known  as  the 
"  Iron  Law  of  Wages."1  Generalising  from  the 
industrial  conditions  of  his  time — when  the  earliest 
forms  of  capitalistic  enterprise  were  exploiting  an 
untrained  and  imprudent  labouring  class,  freshly 
emancipated  from  the  control  of  the  manor  and 
the  cramped  conditions  of  medieval  village  life, 
and  not  yet  capable  of  adapting  themselves  to  the 
changed  environment  of  "free"  employment  in 
a  violently  fluctuating  labour  market — Ricardo 
inferred  that  the  wage-earners  of  the  community 
must  always  find  their  earnings  exceeding  by  very 
little  the  requirements  of  bare  subsistence.  A 
temporary  rise  in  wages  would  only  (he  argued) 
cause  a  corresponding  increase  in  numbers  through 
the  relaxing  of  both  positive  and  preventive 
checks — more  early  marriages  occurring,  more 
children  being  born,  and  fewer  dying  as  a  con- 
sequence of  inferior  nourishment  and  the  resultant 
feebleness  in  the  presence  of  disease.  The  com- 

1  There  are  adumbrations  of  the  law  to  be  found  in  earlier 
writers,  such  as  Turgot  (Reflexions  sur  la  formation  et  la  distribu- 
tion des  richesses,  1770). 


96  WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN  ASIA 

petition  for  work  on  the  part  of  the  increased 
population  would  then  in  its  turn  drive  wages 
back  again  to  the  customary  level ;  where  they 
must  remain  until  some  other  regrettable  disturb- 
ing force  should  happen  to  carry  them  tem- 
porarily higher  or  lower.  But  no  such  disturbing 
force  could  (he  contended)  be  of  more  than 
passing  importance  as  a  controlling  factor  in  the 
situation. 

This  theory  held  almost  undisputed  sway  in  the 
world  of  economic  thought  for  half  a  century.  But 
presently  it  began  to  be  seen  that  contemporary 
facts  could  not  without  much  qualification  be  in- 
duced to  support  the  theory.  The  bulk  of  the 
population  of  England  was  beyond  all  question 
working  its  way  further  and  further  from  the  bare 
subsistence  line.  The  gains  won  by  science  in  the 
matter  of  cheaper  production,  or  by  the  concerted 
action  of  trade  unions  with  their  "  collective  bar- 
gaining "  and  other  methods  of  industrial  warfare, 
were  not  all  squandered  in  worthless  numerical 
growth.  The  working  men  of  England  were 
plainly  climbing  higher. 

The  doctrine,  therefore,  needed  restatement. 
The  requisite  modification  was  effected  by  the 
introduction  of  such  phrases  as  "the  standard  of 
comfort"  or  "the  standard  of  life."  In  other 
words,  Malthus's  prudential  check  was  recognised 
to  be  the  predominant  factor  in  the  problem.  The 


POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS  97 

wage-earners  would  only  marry  when  they  be- 
lieved it  probable  that  they  couM  bring  vp  their 
children  to  a  manner  of  living  similar  to  or  better 
than  their  own.  They  did  not  follow  blind  irre- 
sistible instincts.  As  schools  and  books  and 
newspapers  multiplied,  their  standard  of  life  had 
begun  steadily  to  rise,  their  attitude  towards  life 
was  becoming  continually  more  sagacious,  and 
their  outlook  more  comprehensive.  Less  and  less 
of  the  advantages  of  an  ameliorating  environment 
were  flung  away  in  reckless  addition  to  the  number 
of  competing  mouths ;  more  and  more  were  re- 
tained and  made  the  starting-points  for  yet  further 
progress. 

Thus  the  economist  has  come  almost  to  ignore 
the  once  all-important  "  Law,"  or  to  refer  to  it  as 
an  antiquated  blunder  due  to  inexact  and  inad- 
equate analysis.  Even  for  the  Marxian  socialists 
of  continental  Europe  it  has  long  lost  its  former 
terrors,  and  has  become  but  an  antiquated  bogey 
of  no  value  even  for  controversial  purposes. 

But  none  the  less  the  Iron  Law  is  still  with  us, 
and  will  be  with  us  more  and  more  if  the  stagnant 
pools  of  humanity  in  India  and  China  continue  to 
overflow  into  the  dependencies  of  Europe. 

The  Iron  Law  has  ceased  to  hold  sway  under 
the  stern  skies  of  the  progressive  North,  but  under 
the  enervating  sun  of  the  tropics,  in  the  fecund 
soil  of  Asia,  it  is  as  strong  and  all-pervading  a 


98  WHITE   MAN'S    WORK    IN   ASIA 

principle  as  ever.  Where  self-restraint  is  un- 
developed, where  life  is  lived  easily  on  the  basis 
of  an  income  which  would  be  insufficient  to  keep 
the  white  man  from  sheer  starvation,  and  where, 
above  all,  we  get  the  social  custom  that  all 
members  of  the  community  start  their  life  career 
already  married,  there  there  is  no  scope  for  the 
action  of  preventive  checks,  and  nothing  but  the 
recurrent  intervention  of  flood  and  famine  can 
dam  back  the  rising  tide  of  unprogressive  half- 
animal  life. 

The  crowding  of  nearly  one-half  the  world's 
population  into  the  Chinese  and  the  Indian  Empires 
suggests  how  low  the  Eastern  standard  of  comfort 
must  always  have  been.  But  the  conservatism  of 
the  East  with  regard  to  methods  of  production, 
and  the  seclusion  of  these  vast  masses  of  humanity 
from  the  main  lines  of  international  commerce, 
have  hitherto  kept  in  check  the  tendency  to  ex- 
pansion. Now,  however,  that  the  barriers  against 
international  intercourse  have  been  in  nearly  all 
lands  effectively  broken  down,  and  peace  and 
security  won  by  European  intervention,  we  may 
look  once  more  for  the  impulse  towards  inordinate 
numerical  growth  to  assert  itself  afresh,  as  new 
openings  for  a  bare  livelihood  in  quasi-servitude 
to  the  white  capitalists  allow  the  dark  races  more 
opportunity  yet  for  expansion. 

Under  normal  conditions  economic  wants  and 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  99 

the  capacity  for  satisfying  wants  move  more  or 
less  pari  passu.  The  desire  for  more  economic 
goods  stimulates  activity,  spurs  invention,  and 
promotes  better  methods  of  co-operation  ;  while 
the  discovery  of  unknown  lands,  of  unguessed 
properties  of  matter,  and  of  unforeseen  powers  of 
nature,  allow  previously  suppressed  and  scarcely 
felt  wants  to  develop  freely  and  insist  on  satisfac- 
tion. Progressive  races  continue  dissatisfied,  their 
desires  always  by  a  little  outrunning  the  means 
of  gratification.  The  existence  of  the  economic 
wants  restrains  the  growth  of  numbers.  Only 
with  the  expansion  of  the  means  of  satisfaction 
(such  expansion  as  accompanied  the  industrial 
revolution  of  the  eighteenth,  and  the  scientific 
discoveries  of  the  nineteenth  century)  do  we  find 
the  numbers  of  the  population  expanding  likewise. 
When  a  more  advanced  comes  into  contact  with 
a  lower  race,  unless  the  lower  shrivels  up  and 
passes  away  after  the  manner  of  the  aborigines  of 
North  America  and  Australia,  it  acquires,  with- 
out, as  a  rule,  any  great  change  in  the  quantity 
or  quality  of  its  material  wants,  greatly  increased 
means  of  satisfying  them.  The  arrival  of  the 
steamship  and  the  telegraph  line,  and  the  opening 
up  of  communications  with  the  great  manufactur- 
ing nations  means  for  uncivilised  man  a  vaster 
revolution  than  did  for  us  the  first  discovery  of 
the  economic  uses  of  steam  and  coal.  The  almost 


ioo         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN    ASIA 

inevitable  consequence  is  a  rapid  growth  in 
numbers,  similar  to  the  growth  in  England  during 
the  industrial  revolution.  As  actual  instances  may 
be  cited  certain  races  of  South  Africa.  "  Relieved 
from  these  checks"  (of  depopulating  wars,  etc.) 
"  the  Kafirs  of  the  South  coast  and  of  Basutoland, 
the  regions  in  which  observation  has  been  easiest, 
are  multiplying  faster  than  the  whites,  and  there 
is  no  reason  why  the  same  thing  should  not 
happen  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  The 
number  of  the  Fingoes,  for  instance  (though  they 
are,  no  doubt,  an  exceptionally  thrifty  and  thriving 
tribe),  is  to-day  ten  times  as  great  as  it  was  fifty 
or  sixty  years  ago"  (Bryce,  Impressions  of  South 
Africa,  p.  434).  Our  presence  in  India  is  marked 
less  by  a  positive  increase  in  numbers  (for  there 
has  never  in  historical  times  been  much  margin 
for  growth)  as  by  a  check  in  the  extent  of  those 
periodically  recurring  disasters  which  at  times 
swept  away  whole  masses  of  starving  peasantry. 
The  reduction  in  numbers  was  always  temporary, 
the  population  returning  to  its  previous  level  with 
an  elasticity  which  showed  its  barbaric  character. 
To-day,  however,  flood  and  drought  are  combated 
with  a  zeal  and  promptness  that  prevent  even 
temporary  decreases  in  the  population  except  on 
a  scale  that  is  scarcely  perceptible. 

No  exact  census  returns  enable  us  to  state  safely 
the  loss  of  life  occasioned  by  old-time  famines  in 


POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS  101 

India;  but  that  of  1770  (which  was  probably  not 
the  only  famine  of  its  class)  is  estimated  to  have 
reduced  the  population  by  one  third.  Sir  W.  W. 
Hunter  writes  in  1880:  "The  effect  of  famine  in 
modern  times  upon  the  growth  of  the  population 
is  almost  imperceptible.  Taking  the  whole  scarci- 
ties of  the  past  thirty  years,  the  Commissioners 
estimate  the  annual  deaths  from  the  diseases  and 
all  other  causes  connected  with  famine  at  '  less 
than  2  per  1000'  of  the  inhabitants.  Permanent 
depopulation  from  any  cause  is  now  unknown  " 
(England's  Work  in  India^  Chap.  I). 

These  are  instances  of  the  economic  changes 
wrought  by  the  coming  into  contact  with  one 
another  of  peoples  whose  standards  of  life  are 
widely  diverse.  One  of  the  dangers  which  clearly 
results  is  the  possibility  of  prolonged  suffering 
on  the  part  of  the  emancipated  population  before 
it  has  adapted  itself  to  the  new  conditions.  It 
means  a  revolution  in  national  conditions  similar 
to  the  industrial  revolution  in  eighteenth-century 
England,  when  a  people  which  had  hitherto  dwelt 
in  self-contained  villages,  economically  independ- 
ent each  from  each,  under  conditions  which 
prevented  it  from  regulating  its  own  rate  of  in- 
crease,1 accustomed  to  adjust  its  output  of  labour 

1  Marriages  became  possible  only  when  cottages  were  vacant 
to  receive  the  new  couples,  and  thus  were  practically  limited  by  the 
arbitrary  control  of  the  lord  of  the  manor. 


102         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

and  its  expenditure  of  earnings  to  the  slowly 
changing  requirements  of  a  strictly  limited  local 
market,  was  suddenly  drawn  within  the  swirl  of 
an  international  whirlpool  of  capitalist-directed 
trade,  and  left  to  work  out  its  own  social  destiny, 
untrained  and  unguided,  in  newly  created  centres 
of  population.  Misery  beyond  words  resulted, 
lasting  over  more  than  half  a  century. 

In  the  contemporary  instances  (South  Africa 
and  India)  the  taking  up  by  the  strong  imperialist 
powers  of  the  position  of  keepers  of  the  world's 
peace  means  the  correction  of  one  class  of  evil, 
but  it  leaves  the  ground  ready  for  the  growth  of 
other  and  perhaps  not  less  terrible  evils.  Massacre 
and  organised  piracy  and  slave-raiding  give  place 
to  the  sufferings  which  are  due  to  the  slow-grind- 
ing wheels  of  an  industrial  system  the  mechanism 
of  which  the  sufferers  do  not  understand.  But  the 
latter  do  not  shock  our  sensibilities  as  much  as 
did  the  former.  And  so  we  read  with  patriotic 
pride  and  unmixed  pleasure  such  passages  as 
this:  "  During  the  last  century  large  tracts  of 
Assam  were  (as  a  result  of  exposure  to  invasions) 
depopulated,  and  throughout  that  province  and 
Eastern  Bengal  thirty  thousand  square  miles  of 
fertile  frontier  districts  lay  waste.  .  .  .  The  first 
English  surveyor,  in  the  second  half  of  the  last 
century,  entered  on  his  maps  a  fertile  and  now 
populous  tract  of  a  thousand  square  miles  on  the 


POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS  103 

sea-board,  as  bare  of  villages,  with  the  significant 
words  written  across  it,  '  Depopulated  by  the 
Maghs,'  or  sea-robbers."  "  The  unsettled  frontier 
of  the  last  century  meant  that  sixty  thousand 
square  miles  of  borderland  (double  the  whole  area 
of  Scotland)  were  abandoned  to  jungle  and  the 
wild  beasts,  not  because  there  were  no  people  to 
cultivate  the  soil,  but  because  they  did  not  dare 
to  do  so.  It  signifies  that  tracts  which  might  have 
yielded,  and  which  will  yet  yield,  thirty  millions 
sterling  worth  of  food  each  year  lay  untilled 
through  terror  of  the  turbulent  hill  races.  The 
security  given  by  a  century  of  British  rule  in  these 
frontier  districts  means  thirteen  thousand  square 
miles  already  brought  under  the  plough,  growing 
each  year  eighteen  millions  sterling  worth  of  pro- 
duce, or  more  than  the  average  normal  cost  of 
the  Indian  army  and  the  whole  defence  of  the 
Indian  Empire"  (Hunter's  England's  Work  in 
India,)  Chap.  I).  Thus  it  comes  about  that  the 
more  violent  forms  of  national  suffering  are  swept 
away.  But  while  we  rejoice  that  they  are  swept 
away,  we  must  remember  that  in  placing  at  the 
service  of  untrained  masses  of  humanity  our  vast 
material  aids  to  a  life  of  comparative  comfort,  we 
are  complicating  the  problems  connected  with  the 
future  of  our  own  working  classes,  and  are  in- 
creasing the  dead  numerical  weight  of  what  we 
shall  in  all  probability  soon  be  calling  the  prole- 


104         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN  ASIA 

tariat  races.  As  it  is,  it  is  not  a  serious  ex- 
aggeration to  describe  that  half  of  the  world's 
inhabitants  which  dwells  between  the  Arabian 
Gulf  and  the  Sea  of  Japan  as  the  world's  slum 
population.  The  problems  of  the  future,  which 
our  present  difficulties  with  our  city  masses  should 
be  preparing  us  to  solve,  are  in  many  ways  but 
a  reproduction  of  the  existing  group  of  slum 
problems  reappearing  on  an  oecumenical  scale. 

§  23.  Perhaps  we  may  restate  the  economic 
difficulty  in  this  way.  In  any  country,  however 
far  advanced,  we  get  roughly  the  two  classes,  (a) 
the  thrifty,  who  prefer  to  immediate  enjoyment, 
or  the  increase  of  the  numbers  that  are  capable  of 
enjoyment,  the  accumulation  of  safeguards  against 
future  suffering;  and  (b)  the  unthrifty,  who  increase 
the  number  of  mouths  recklessly  and  snatch  at  any 
immediate  means  of  enjoyment  that  comes  within 
reach.  The  boundaries  of  the  two  classes  are 
not  sharply  defined.  They  interpenetrate  closely. 
But  both  are  to  a  large  extent  hereditary  classes, 
the  members  of  each  providing  for  their  own  off- 
spring an  environment  strongly  favouring  the 
perpetuation  of  the  parental  type. 

The  bulk  of  the  populations  of  Asia  and  Africa 
(with  whom  we  may  bracket  the  Negroes  of  the 
Southern  area  of  the  United  States)  belong  un- 
questionably to  the  second  class  ;  and  we  get 
serious  problems  to  face  as  the  result  either  of 


POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS          105 

the  migration  of  moderate  numbers  of  the  in- 
ferior into  the  midst  of  superior  populations  (as 
of  the  Chinese  into  America  and  Australia),  or 
of  the  interfusion  on  a  larger  scale  of  two  un- 
equally developed  populations  (as  of  white  and 
black  in  the  Southern  States  of  America  and  in 
South  Africa),  or  of  the  systematic  commercial 
intercourse  between  advanced  and  retrograde 
peoples  (the  clamour  against  "  Chinese  cheap 
labour"  being  extended  to  the  products  of  that 
labour,  as  being  equally  ruinous  to  the  industry 
of  the  better-class  labour  of  other  lands). 

In  the  last  of  these  three  cases  the  workman  is 
regarded  chiefly  in  his  capacity  of  a  wealth-pro- 
ducing machine,  and  a  very  little  unbiassed  con- 
sideration will  show  that,  if  this  aspect  is  alone 
regarded,  the  hostility  to  the  productions  of 
foreign  cheap  labour  is  as  short-sighted  as  is 
hostility  on  philanthropic  grounds  to  the  intro- 
duction of  labour-saving  machinery.  We  may 
forfeit  the  main  advantages  of  international  trade 
by  shutting  out  the  products  either  of  high-grade 
American  machinery,  or  of  low-grade  Oriental 
labour,  and  in  so  doing  may,  perhaps,  benefit 
temporarily  some  group  of  labourers  at  home — 
at  the  expense  of  the  rest  of  the  community.  It 
is  possible  that  we  may  do  this  with  advantage. 
But  unless  we  are  legislating  in  the  interests  of 
the  down-trodden  foreign  labourer,  and  wish  to 


io6         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

destroy  the  sweated  industries  abroad,  the  pro- 
hibitive or  protective  legislation  will  have  no  more 
philanthropic  justification  in  the  one  case  than  in 
the  other. 

But  a  member  of  an  inferior  race  is  not  merely 
a  wealth-producing  machine.  He  must  also  be 
regarded  as  an  animal  whose  presence  may  be  to 
us  fellow-members  of  the  animal  kingdom  a 
source  of  physical  degradation  and  a  generator 
of  diseases ;  and  he  must,  of  course,  be  reckoned 
with,  besides,  as  a  moral  agent  whose  presence 
may  have  social  effects  of  a  serious  character.  It 
is  these  two  aspects  that  require  the  fullest  con- 
sideration before  judgment  can  be  passed  as  to 
the  proper  attitude  to  be  assumed  towards  alien 
immigrants,  or  the  best  relations  to  be  observed 
towards  the  black  masses  within  the  United  States 
or  the  South  African  Colonies. 

The  fact  that  the  Asiatic  is  perhaps  an  un- 
healthy animal  for  the  white  to  live  with  (in  very 
much  the  same  way  as  the  vanishing  aboriginal 
populations  of  America  and  Australia  found  the 
white  man  an  unhealthy  companion)1  is  a  par- 

1  This  may  be  due  to  very  various  causes,  but  perhaps  the 
most  important  is  the  fact  that  one  race  may  be  a  "tolerant 
host "  of  some  microbe  or  parasite  which  brings  suffering  or 
death  to  another.  Thus  the  African's  blood  suffers  freely  the 
presence  of  the  germs  of  malarial  fever,  and  the  wild  animals  of 
Africa  are  uninjured  by  the  Tsetse-fly  for  whose  existence  they 
supply  harbourage  and  nourishment ;  but  the  human  immigrants 
and  the  imported  cattle  succumb  to  the  attacks  for  which  their 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  107 

ticular  aspect  of  the  same  problem  of  social  re- 
lations which  comes  before  us  in  connection  with 
the  density  of  our  overgrown  cities,  only  of 
course  on  a  scale  which  may  make  it  many  times 
more  serious.  The  fact  that  he  must  also  be  re- 
garded as  a  moral  agent  is  only  an  intensified 
instance  of  the  evil  we  must  continually  combat 
in  connection  with  the  influence,  on  children,  of 
low-grade  servants,  or  of  bad  schools  and  debasing 
companionships  in  general. 

When  an  attempt  is  made  to  delineate  the 
general  policy  to  be  followed  out  in  any  particular 
local  difficulty  such  as  those  just  cited,  these  three 
aspects  of  man — the  necessity  of  considering  him 
as  a  wealth-producer,  as  a  member  of  the  animal 
kingdom,  and  as  a  moral  and  social  agent — should 
all  receive  their  measure  of  attention.  At  times 
one  or  the  other  element  may  be  so  important  that 
we  can  afford  temporarily  to  ignore  the  others,  but 
it  is  seldom  true  that  only  one  aspect  is  worth  con- 
sideration, and  nearly  always  we  find  that  the 
diverse  considerations  are  closely  intertwined. 

Moreover,  national  feebleness  and  national  back- 
wardness are  altogether  relative  terms  which  de- 
pend for  their  value  on  the  temporary  requirements 

blood  is  unprepared.  Similarly  it  may  be  that  an  Asiatic  can  live 
in  filthy  surrounding's  because  the  particular  disease  germs  which 
flourish  there  in  no  way  menace  his  health  ;  while  the  European, 
in  much  less  close  contact  with  the  same  filth,  is  mown  down  by 
the  diseases  originating  from  it. 


io8         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

of  a  changing  environment.  The  Teutonic  tribes 
of  the  time  of  Caesar,  though  endowed  (like  most 
savages)  with  a  few  eminently  good  qualities, 
might  well  have  seemed  to  contemporary  eyes  as 
little  worth  preserving  as  the  negro  peoples  seem 
to  us  to-day.  Had  the  power  of  Rome  been 
turned  against  them  a  generation  earlier  than  it 
was,  the  Teuton  might,  quite  conceivably,  have 
disappeared  from  history,  leaving  as  little  material 
from  which  to  judge  his  latent  capacities  as  any 
decaying  race  in  the  regions  of  the  Congo  or  the 
Zambesi.  Can  we  even  be  certain  that  the 
Spaniard  in  Mexico  or  Peru  supplanted  a  civilisa- 
tion intrinsically  inferior  to  his  own? 

The  nations  that  have  thus  succumbed  have 
lacked  the  qualities  necessary  to  enable  them  to 
hold  their  own  in  the  struggles  that  were  forced 
upon  them.  We  cannot  assert  positively  that 
they  lacked  qualities  which  their  conquerors 
might  not  have  imitated  with  advantage.  Nor, 
though  new  opportunities  evoke  in  some  cases  un- 
anticipated capabilities,  as  is  shown  by  the  rapid 
development  of  Japanese  and  Maoris,  ought  we  to 
despair  of  the  evolution  of  similar  high  qualities 
in  cases  where  they  do  not  spring  up  in  a  night. 
The  comparatively  slight  elevating  influence  of  a 
small  measure  of  Christianity  must  not  blind  us  to 
possibilities  which  receive  at  least  some  support 
from  historical  analogies.  "The  Kafirs"  (says 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  109 

Mr.  Bryce)  "are  not  such  bad  Christians  as  the 
Prankish  warriors  were  for  two  or  three  genera- 
tions after  the  conversion  of  Clovis.  We  must 
wait  for  several  generations  before  we  can  judge 
fairly  of  the  influence  of  his  new  religion  upon  the 
mind  of  a  Kafir  whose  ancestors  had  no  religion 
at  all,  and  were  ruled  by  the  lowest  forms  of 
superstition."  Similarly  we  must  not  assume  too 
hastily  an  "  incapacity  "  on  the  part  of  the  Asiatic 
to  accept  and  be  influenced  by  Christianity.  It 
may  or  may  not  be  true,  that  the  number  of  Chris- 
tian converts  in  India  in  the  nineteenth  century  is 
greater  than  the  number  in  the  Roman  Empire  in 
the  first ;  but  it  is  almost  certainly  the  case  that 
Christianity  has  permeated  and  leavened  Indian 
thought  more  than  it  influenced  the  Roman  world 
in  a  similar  period. 

§  24.  Mr.  Bryce  in  his  Romanes  Lecture  for 
1902  (The  Relations  of  the  Advanced  and  the  Back- 
ward Races  of  Mankind}  points  out  the  importance 
of  the  present  epoch  as  marking  the  close  of  the 
process  of  mapping  out  the  earth's  surface,  and  the 
bringing  into  mutual  relations  in  all  parts  of  it 
of  the  most  and  the  least  advanced  portions  of 
humanity.  In  the  new  conditions  thus  created  he 
sees  evils  for  which  he  vainly  seeks  remedies. 
"Although  the  troubles  which  follow  upon  the 
contact  of  peoples  in  different  stages  of  civilisation 
are  more  serious  in  some  countries  and  under 


no         WHITE    MAN'S   WORK    IN    ASIA 

some  conditions  than  they  are  likely  to  prove  in 
others,  they  are  always  serious  enough  to  raise  the 
question  of  the  best  means  of  avoiding  such  a 
contact,  if  it  can  be  avoided.  That  contact  can  be 
averted  by  inducing  European  peoples  to  forbear 
from  annexing  or  settling  in  the  countries  in- 
habited by  the  coloured  races  is  not  to  be  expected. 
The  impulses  which  move  those  peoples  in  the 
present  will  not  be  checked  by  the  prospect  of 
evils  in  the  future.  Besides,  the  work  of  annexa- 
tion is  practically  done  already.  Neither  can  it  be 
suggested  that  one  of  two  disparate  races  already 
established  should  be  removed  to  leave  the  ground 
free  to  the  other.  No  one  proposes  that  the 
French  should  quit  Algeria,  or  the  English  India, 
or  the  Russians  Western  Turkistan,  not  to  add 
that  the  mischiefs  likely  to  follow  such  a  with- 
drawal would  be  greater  than  the  difficulties  which 
the  presence  of  the  conquerors  at  this  moment 
causes  "  (pp.  32,  33). 

This  line  of  thought,  however,  would  seem  to 
ignore  certain  counterbalancing  benefits,  which, 
though  less  immediately  obvious,  can  hardly  be 
dismissed  as  being  of  secondary  significance.  On 
the  one  hand  the  conscientious  grappling  with  the 
problem  of  elevating  their  backward  neighbours 
must,  in  the  long  run,  be  productive  of  desirable 
results  to  the  higher  peoples ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  only  through  the  stress  and  strain  and 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  in 

incidental  miseries  arising  from  contact  of  strange 
folks  that  the  stagnation  of  primitive  and  secluded 
nations  can  be  avoided.1  Even  from  the  modern 
practice  of  migration,  under  contract,  of  Hindu 
coolies  to  countries  like  Mauritius  and  British 
Guiana — accompanied  though  the  system  be  by 
much  abuse  of  power  on  the  side  of  the  European, 
and  the  slackening  of  customary  moral  restraints 
among  the  Asiatics — much  good  is  certain,  in  the 
long  run,  to  accrue  to  the  Asiatic  peoples.  In 
their  novel  surroundings  their  attitude  towards 
ancestral  custom  is  greatly  modified  by  the  widen- 
ing of  their  experience— a  gain  which  is  liable  to 
be  overlooked  by  philanthropic  critics  such  as 
Mr.  J.  A.  Hobson,  who  sees  in  the  system  of 
indentured  labour  only  "a  subordination  of  wider 
social  considerations  to  purposes  of  present  in- 
dustrial exploitation "  {Imperialism,  p.  290).  In 
the  stirring  of  the  new  ideas  which  will  find  their 
way  into  India  along  with  the  returned  wanderers 
— even  though  the  revolutionary  impulse  be  at- 
tended by  the  temporary  eclipse  of  unreasoning  — ^ 
" moral"  sanctions,  and  the  weakening  of  caste 
and  communal  restraints — there  must  be  a  distinct 
balance  of  good.  The  incidental  demoralisation 

1  Cf.  "  I  think  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  isolate  natives  or  place 
them  in  reserves,  if  such  a  course  can  be  avoided,  for  such  isola- 
tion inevitably  confirms  them  in  their  old  bad  customs,  and  cuts 
them  off  from  contact  with  superior  races  which  might  improve 
them  "  (Sir  Charles  Eliot,  The  East  Africa  Protectorate,  p.  242). 


H2         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

is  the  more  conspicuous  result ;  and  this  it  is 
natural  for  the  statesman  to  place  in  the  forefront 
of  the  discussion,  his  part  being  to  give  their  full 
due  of  attention  to  transitional  evils.  The  theorist 
of  philosophical  temper  is  more  likely  to  neglect 
these  temporary  considerations  in  his  interest  in 
the  world  of  the  far-off  future.  We  shall  endeavour 
to  give  due  weight  to  both. 

As  has  been  said  (§§  1-4)  the  task  of  the 
dominant  races  is  that  of  so  ordering  the  relations 
of  higher  and  lower  in  the  present  that  coming 
generations  may  find  the  world  a  wholesomer 
dwelling-place  than  we  find  it  now.  Accepting 
this  view,  there  are  writers  and  thinkers  who  urge 
that  the  wisest  and  most  economical  means  of 
achieving  some  part  of  the  desired  end  is  to  hasten 
the  gradual  displacement  of  the  inferior  peoples, 
so  that  the  ground  may  be  cleared  for  the  expan- 
sion of  our  own  and  kindred  stocks.  Action  of 
this  character  is  natural  to  the  natural  man,  and 
in  the  early  days  of  man's  history,  before  man  was 
in  any  true  sense  man,  it  may  have  been  of 
essential  service  in  aiding  the  elimination  of  the 
unfittest.  A  milder  application  of  the  same  under- 
lying belief  in  the  superior  claims  of  the  higher 
races, — the  determination  to  keep  the  sparsely 
populated  parts  of  the  globe  as  free  as  possible 
from  the  intrusion  of  rapidly  multiplying  Indians 
and  Chinese,  has  much  to  be  said  for  it.  But  is 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 

FOf     •••- 
POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  113 

there  anything  to  be  said  for  a  wider  application 
of  the  idea  in  its  unqualified  harshness?  Here  is 
one  statement  of  it.  "It  is  impossible  to  believe 
that  even  the  highest  races  have  the  intelligence 
to  recognise  the  ascendencies  and  elect  the  affini- 
ties which  must  govern  the  future.  Still  less  can 
we  believe  that  the  uncivilised  races  will  develop 
that  intelligence  within  any  calculable  period. 
Must  we  wait  their  time  and  leave  them  in  fester- 
ing disorganisation  in  the  midst  of  an  organised 
humanity?  It  should  not  and  it  will  not  be.  .  .  . 
Some  race,  more  virile  and  constructive  than  the 
rest,  will  get  the  ascendency.  Other  races,  though 
nominally  independent,  will  take  their  cue  from 
this,  recognising  at  first  by  vehement  denials,  and 
then  by  sullen  acquiescence,  a  hegemony  which 
will  at  last  pass  over  into  automatic  and  even 
enthusiastic  allegiance  as  time  brings  its  inevitable 
adaptations.  In  attaining  this  result  the  weak 
races  of  the  temperate  zone  seem  doomed  to  ex- 
tinction, those  of  the  tropics  to  subjection.  What 
else  should  or  can  be  the  fate  of  inferiority?  .  .  . 
There  is  undoubtedly  an  element  of  tragedy  in  it 
all.  .  .  .  But  dying  races  suffer  little,  and  dead 
races  suffer  naught.  To  bewail  the  process  is  to 
misconceive  its  import  and  to  squander  sympathies 
which  spent  elsewhere  would  minister  unto  life. 
For  happiness,  however  dependent  for  the  moment 
on  tottering  institutions  and  obsolete  adjustments, 


ii4         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

is  ultimately  synonymous  with  adaptation  and 
health.  .  .  .  Only  those  who  conceive  of  the  earth 
as  intended  for  an  ethnological  museum  can  regret 
the  progressive  displacement  of  the  lower  by  the 
higher  races  of  mankind.  If  it  be  said  that  we 
can  educate  these  races  up  to  our  level,  the  reply 
is  that  it  will  not  be  done,  because  it  is  not  the 
economical  thing  to  do.  It  is  vastly  easier  to  dis- 
place a  feeble  stock  than  to  assimilate  it  upward 
by  education  ;  and  if  we  invest  our  vital  capital  in 
a  losing  process,  a  thriftier  race  will  dispossess 
both  our  proteges  and  us  "  (Mr.  H.  H.  Powers  in 
the  International  Journal  of  Ethics ^  April,  1900). 

"  It  is  vastly  easier  to  displace  .  .  .  than  to 
assimilate."  The  educating  "will  not  be  done, 
because  it  is  not  the  economical  thing  to  do." 
May  we  not  accept  the  former  statement,  and  in 
accepting  it — almost  because  of  accepting  it — re- 
ject the  latter?  There  are  few  short  cuts  in  pro- 
gress once  we  rise  above  the  baser  levels  of  life. 
It  is  the  very  difficulties  that  we  have  to  face  that 
spur  us  on  our  way.  Without  the  stimulus  of 
pain  we  should  have  advanced  but  little.  On  the 
higher  levels  we  are  beckoned  forward  by  the 
visions  we  owe  to  our  noblest  dreamers,  and 
driven  forward,  simultaneously,  by  the  sufferings 
incidental  to  our  present  position — by  "each  re- 
buff that  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough  " — the 
two  sets  of  forces  combining  to  shape  our 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  115 

destinies.  The  worthier  aim,  in  our  dealings 
with  the  backward  races,  being  undoubtedly 
assimilation  rather  than  displacement,  the  efforts 
called  forth  to  effect  assimilation,  though  at  first 
sight  they  may  seem  uneconomical,  will  assuredly 
bring  with  them  benefits  of  no  mean  order.  "  The 
supposed  natural  necessity  for  crowding  out  the 
lower  races  is  based  on  a  narrow,  low,  and  purely 
quantitative  analysis  of  human  progress. "  "In 
the  highest  walks  of  human  progress  the  constant 
tendency  is  to  substitute  more  and  more  the 
struggle  with  natural  and  moral  environment  for 
the  internecine  struggle  of  living  individuals  and 
species,  and  .  ,  .  the  efficient  conduct  of  this 
struggle  requires  the  suspension  of  the  lower 
struggle  and  a  growing  solidarity  of  sentiment 
and  sympathy  throughout  entire  humanity."  So 
writes  Mr.  Hobson  (Imperialism^  p.  247).  And, 
it  may  be  added — in  the  very  prolongation  of  the 
ethical  struggle  and  the  complexity  of  its  con- 
ditions— calling,  as  they  must,  for  the  exercise 
of  higher  and  yet  higher  faculties— we  shall  reap 
the  rewards  of  a  richer  and  deeper  social  and 
spiritual  experience.  This  Mr.  Powers  has  partly 
seen,  and  it  is  satisfactory  that  such  a  writer  can 
(to  some  extent)  be  answered  out  of  his  own 
mouth.  "  Are  the  nations  that  have  best  minded 
their  own  business "  (he  asks)  .  .  .  "the  ones  that 
have  progressed  most  rapidly  towards  the  attain- 


ii6         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

ment  of  high  ideals  .  .  .  ?  Every  new  burden 
laid  on  our  civil  service  increases  the  demand  for 
its  purification  ;  every  responsibility  from  without 
heals  a  dissension  within."  Mr.  Powers'  "high 
ideals  "  (it  would  seem)  are  mostly  connected  with 
the  material  framework  of  life,  and  not  with  what 
we  should  consider  its  essence.  But  both  on  the 
higher  and  on  the  lower  levels  of  existence  it  is 
unquestionably  true  that  "the  nations  that  have 
best  minded  their  own  business"  are  not  the 
nations  "that  have  progressed  most  rapidly 
towards  the  attainment  of  high  ideals."  The 
English  proletariat  has  not  suffered  loss  because 
much  of  the  best  intellect  and  earnestness  of  Eng- 
land is  spent  on  distant  problems,  in  India  and 
Egypt ;  but  has  rather  gained  by  the  reaction,  on 
the  English  middle-class's  moral  outlook,  of  the 
brave  work  done  abroad.  It  is  thus,  from  the 
stirring  impulse  of  widely  scattered  activities, 
that  the  nation  grows  towards  moral  greatness. 
To  contract  its  moral  interests  would  be  to 
encourage  atrophy.  To  bewail  the  fate  of  dying 
races  may  be  "to  squander  sympathies  which 
spent  elsewhere  would  minister  unto  life."  But 
to  work  steadily,  or  at  least  to  wait  patiently, 
while  every  opportunity  is  given  for  every  race's 
social  development,  is  not  to  squander  sympathy 
but  to  adopt  an  attitude  which  more  than  any 
Other  will  tend  to  prevent  our  own  retrogression. 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  117 

§  25.  Alongside  of  Mr.  Power's  arguments  we 
may  set  those  of  a  better  known  writer,  who  would 
have  us  adopt  a  similar  policy  of  checking  as  far 
as  possible  the  numerical  expansion  of  the  lower 
races.  Mr.  C.  H.  Pearson,  in  his  National  Life 
and  Character,  remarks  (p.  13)  that  "  it  might  con- 
ceivably be  of  use  if  European  statesmen  could 
understand  that  the  wars  which  carry  desolation 
into  civilised  countries,  are  allowing  the  lower 
races  time  to  recruit  their  numbers  and  their 
strength.  Two  centuries  hence  it  may  be  matter 
of  serious  concern  to  the  world  if  Russia  has  been 
displaced  by  China  on  the  Amoor,  if  France  has 
not  been  able  to  colonise  North  Africa,  or  if  Eng- 
land is  not  holding  India."  The  underlying 
assumption  (for  which  we  have  admitted  that 
there  is  much  that  can  be  urged  in  support)  seems 
to  be  that  the  "  lower  "  are  permanently  to  remain 
lower  races,  and  either  that  their  contributions  to 
the  ennobling  of  man's  destiny  are  and  always  will 
be  negligible,  or  else  that  our  main  concern  is  not 
with  the  maintenance  of  higher  principles  and 
wider  views  of  life,  but  with  the  perpetuation  of 
our  own  particular  variety  of  humanity.  But  is  it 
not  after  all  the  preservation  and  development  of 
higher  ideas  and  ideals  of  art,  science,  and  mo- 
rality, which  should  more  especially  interest  us  ? 

If  it  were  conclusively  shown  that  some  physical 
incompatibility  would  prevent  ourselves  and  the 


u8         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

coloured  peoples  from  ever  dwelling  together  in 
security  and  in  amity,  without  evil  effects  to  us  and 
to  them  (even  after  the  sanitary  laws  which  we 
ourselves  have  but  partially  come  to  recognise 
and  obey  have  been  accepted  by  them  also),  then, 
indeed,  the  prospect  of  a  relative  decrease  in  the 
numbers  of  the  white  race  might  well  make  us 
pause.  But  even  then  the  argument  for  the 
expenditure  of  blood  and  toil  in  the  maintenance 
of  our  present  hegemony  would  be  inconclusive. 
If  the  coming  lords  of  the  earth  are  to  be  ethically 
superior  to  ourselves,  their  attainment  of  political 
supremacy  is  a  thing  to  be  welcomed  without 
shrinking.  Certainly  it  could  not  be  justifiably 
accounted  an  evil  to  be  combated  a  outrance  in 
the  interests  of  the  white  race  of  the  future,  merely 
because  the  white  man  of  that  day  will  be  our  own 
offspring. 

The  very  next  sentence  which  follows  those 
quoted  above  from  this  Australian  publicist  sup- 
plies, unintentionally,  the  counter-argument  to  the 
alarmist's  own.  "  For  civilised  men  "  (he  goes  on) 
"  there  can  be  only  one  fatherland,  and  whatever 
extends  the  influence  of  those  races  that  have 
taken  their  faith  from  Palestine,  their  laws  of 
beauty  from  Greece,  and  their  civil  law  from 
Rome,  ought  to  be  matter  of  rejoicing  to  Russian, 
German,  Anglo-Saxon,  and  Frenchman  alike.*' 
Ostensibly  then  the  reason  for  rejoicing  at  the 


POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS  119 

advance  of  Anglo-Saxon  or  Slav  is  that  these 
peoples  have  adopted  from  certain  others  certain 
principles  and  ideas  (among  them  even  certain 
specialised  views  of  what  constitutes  the  beauti- 
ful). But  if  we  are  to  include  in  one  common 
fellowship  all  nations  that  have  hitherto  adopted 
(however  imperfectly)  the  principles  and  ideas 
identified  with  our  conception  of  the  "  one  father- 
land "  of  civilised  men,  is  it  reasonable  to  exclude 
from  that  circle,  without  argument  or  considera- 
tion, any  non-European  people  that  follows  some- 
what more  tardily  the  same  precedent? 

Moreover,  if  we  have  done  wisely  in  borrowing 
in  the  past  (from  Greece,  Rome,  and  Palestine), 
can  it  be  wisdom  to  forego  for  the  future  all  oppor- 
tunity of  further  borrowing — of  modifying,  for 
instance,  our  aesthetic  standards  by  contact  with 
Chinese  and  Japanese  art,  or  our  conceptions  of 
practical  ethics  from  our  observation  of  Japanese 
life? 

There  is  certainly  here  (and  Mr.  Pearson's  argu- 
ment may  perhaps  be  taken  as  typical  of  the 
average  European's  attitude  on  the  point)  either 
much  confusion  of  thought,  or  else  a  dogmatic 
assumption  of  the  impossibility  of  Asiatic  and 
African  peoples  following  in  our  steps  in  borrow- 
ing what  the  Mediterranean  nations  (and  not  we 
ourselves)  took  the  initiative  in  developing. 

§  26.  All  the  surface  of  the  earth  has  now  been 


120         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

brought  within  the  range  of  the  white  man's 
knowledge.  That  it  will  never  again,  except 
perhaps  temporarily,  and  in  unimportant  areas, 
need  rediscovery,  and  that  it  will  pass  more  and 
more  definitely  under  the  white  man's  control  may 
be  taken  for  granted.  Economic  "  necessities " 
(the  term  being  generally  a  euphemism  for  ex- 
panding greed)  will  of  themselves  prevent  any 
surh  re  :sions.  The  advanced  industrial  com- 
j  using  in  increasing  quantities  the 
oducts  of  the  tropics — caoutchouc,  sugar, 
u  cocoa,  coffee,  tobacco,  cotton,  and  so  forth. 
Irregularities  in  the  supply  of  such  commodities 
will  be  felt  more  and  more  keenly,  and  will  "  neces- 
sitate "  closer  and  firmer  supervision  of  the 
producing  lands.  What  shape,  it  is  natural  to 
ask,  will  the  supervision  take? 

Hitherto  the  hot  belt  of  the  globe  has  not  been 
a  possible  home  for  the  permanent  settlement  of 
the  European.  Possibly  it  will  never  become  so, 
in  spite  of  the  vast  strides  made  by  science  in 
conquering  such  evils  as  malaria.  We  must 
expect  the  Anglo-Indian  system  to  be  the  model 
of  the  relations  to  be  established  between  the 
ruling  races  and  the  dependencies.  A  few  white 
officials  will  more  or  less  permanently  reside  in 
the  midst  of  the  dependent  peoples,  coming  and 
going  with  ever-increasing  ease  and  speed,  and 
communicating  with  their  home  governments  with 


POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS  121 

ever  greater  fulness  and  mutual  comprehension. 
The  mere  problem  of  legislation  and  policing 
seems  likely  to  become  a  simpler  and  less  danger- 
ous task  as  the  years  go  by.  Indeed,  we  have 
rather  reason  to  dread  that  it  will  become  too 
simple.  Ever  desirous  of  expanding  in  wealth 
and  numbers,  and  unable  by  their  own  physical 
efforts  to  exploit  the  tropical  zone,  the  industrial 
peoples  of  the  North  are  likely  to  be  under  a  grow- 
ing temptation  to  revert  to  compulsory  labour- 
systems  (such  as  the  "  culture-system  "  adopted 
by  the  Dutch  Government  in  Java,  or  the  thinly 
disguised  slavery  of  the  Portuguese  island  of  San 
Thome').  For  such  a  policy  specious  excuses  will 
always  be  forthcoming  and  readily  believed.  It 
will  be  a  duty,  it  will  be  said,  to  enable  the 
higher  races  to  expand  rather  than  the  lower, 
unless  the  average  mass  of  mankind  is  to  retro- 
grade :  it  will  be  beneficent,  others  will  add,  to 
stimulate  the  backward  peoples  into  efforts  they 
would  be  unlikely  to  make  on  their  own  initiative  : 
the  earth,  it  will  be  insisted  by  materialistic  utili- 
tarians, was  made  to  be  developed — to  allow  rich 
tracts  to  lie  undeveloped  would  be  ingratitude 
towards  a  kindly  Providence.  Such  cries  will  not 
be  lightly  silenced. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  a  description  of  the  state 
of  the  West  Indies  to-day.  "The  black  races 
under  the  new  order  of  things  have  multiplied 


122         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

exceedingly.  Where  left  to  themselves  under 
British  rule,  whether  with  or  without  the  political 
institutions  of  the  advanced  European  peoples, 
they  have  not  developed  the  natural  resources  of 
the  rich  and  fertile  lands  they  have  inherited. 
Nor  do  they  show  any  desire  to  undertake  the 
task.  The  descriptions  we  have  had  presented 
to  us  for  many  years  past  by  writers  and  poli- 
ticians of  some  of  the  West  India  islands  read 
like  accounts  of  a  former  civilisation.  Decaying 
harbours,  once  crowded  with  shipping ;  ruined 
wharves,  once  busy  with  commerce ;  roofless  ware- 
houses; stately  buildings  falling  to  ruins  and  over- 
grown with  tropical  creepers  ;  deserted  mines  and 
advancing  forests — these  are  some  of  the  signs  of 
the  change.  In  Hayti,  where  the  blacks  have 
been  independent  of  European  control  for  the 
greater  part  of  a  century,  we  have  even  a  more 
gloomy  picture.  Revolution  has  succeeded  re- 
volution, often  accompanied  by  revolting  crime ; 
under  the  outward  forms  of  European  government 
every  form  of  corruption  and  licence  has  pre- 
vailed ;  its  commerce  has  been  more  than  once 
almost  extinguished  by  its  political  revolutions  ; 
the  resources  of  the  country  remain  undeveloped  ; 
intercourse  with  white  races  is  not  encouraged, 
and  the  Black  Republic,  instead  of  advancing,  is 
said  to  be  drifting  slowly  backwards."1  Para- 

1  Kidd,  Social  Evolution,  Chap.  X. 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  123 

graphs  such  as  this  will  almost  inevitably  be  used 
as  texts  of  a  revived  imperialistic  propaganda. 
Even  as  it  is,  the  misgovernment  of  South  and 
Central  America,  merely  because  of  its  bearings 
on  the  security  and  stability  of  trade,  has  called 
into  being  a  tentative  policy  of  spasmodic  inter- 
ventions. In  the  not  far  distant  future  we  shall 
probably  hear  more  of  the  allied  question  of  the 
squandering  of  natural  resources.  The  difficulty 
for  the  genuine  humanitarian  will  be  to  hold  his 
own  in  insisting  that  such  issues  be  treated  as 
subordinate  to  the  problems  of  human  develop- 
ment and  enlightenment. 

It  is  on  this  ground  that  issue  will  have  to  be 
joined  with  the  ultra-imperialists.  To  content 
ourselves  with  mere  assertions  of  the  inviolability 
of  national  " property  rights"  in  certain  terri- 
tories, or  of  the  sanctity  of  national  " freedom," 
is  to  adopt  an  antiquated  standpoint  which  will 
not  bear  the  test  of  careful  scrutiny.  The  philo- 
sophical jurist  cannot  admit  any  claim  to  absolute- 
ness in  connection  even  with  private  property 
rights.  Such  rights  are  always  conditional  grants 
of  the  ultimate  sovereign  power,  and  are  strictly  cor- 
relative with  corresponding  duties.  The  "right" 
of  backward  races  to  do  as  they  please  with  the 
lands  they  inhabit,  or  with  their  own  persons, 
though  not  yet  explicitly  brought  within  the  pur- 
view of  the  same  theory,  is  obviously  subject  to 


124         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

similar  limitations;  the  ultimate  " sovereignty " 
in  these  cases  lying  with  the  strong  civilised 
powers,  who  will  only  grant  freedom  of  action 
to  the  dark  races  under  limitations  as  regards 
responsibility  for  its  proper  employment.1 

All  this  we  must  grant.  But  we  must  refuse, 
point-blank,  to  accept  hasty  and  selfish  definitions 
of  what  constitutes  "  proper  employment."  A 
region  which  supports  a  race  of  contented  hunters 
or  pastoralists  (if  any  such  there  be)  is  not  to  be 
dubbed  misused  territory  because  the  application 
of  adequate  capital  would  turn  it  from  meadow- 
land  and  forest  into  a  mining  and  manufacturing 
district,  bristling  with  prosperous  chimneys  set 
between  gigantic  mullock  heaps  by  the  side  of 
polluted  streams.  The  fact  that  certain  tribes 
prefer  to  pass  their  days  in  basking  in  the  sun, 
when  not  engaged  in  hunting  and  fishing,  does 
not  constitute  them  creatures  that  may  fitly  be 
turned  into  "  living  tools  "  to  suit  the  convenience 
of  those  whose  ideals  are  different. 

1  This  is  practically  the  principle  that  has  already  been  definitely 
accepted  as  between  European  powers,  with  regard  to  the  occupa- 
tion by  any  of  them  of  territory  in  Africa.  See  Article  35  of  the 
Berlin  Convention  (quoted  by  Professor  Westlake,  Peace,  p.  106). 
Professor  Westlake  adds  (ibid.,  p.  109):  "What  is  above  all 
necessary  both  for  the  theorist  and  the  statesman  is  to  bear  well 
in  mind  that  no  title  can  prevail  against  the  substantial  non-fulfil- 
ment of  the  duties  attached  to  it,  not  even  if  the  notification 
required  by  the  Conference  of  Berlin  has  been  made,  and  has 
not  met  with  any  objection  from  the  powers  which  have  re- 
ceived it." 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  125 

§  27.  Where  the  administration  of  half-civilised 
territories  has  passed  definitely  into  the  hands  of 
Western  rulers,  a  question  of  policy  arises,  so 
complex  that  the  greatest  of  administrators  can 
find  no  simple  answer  to  it.  In  a  new  form  it  is 
the  old  problem  of  the  advisability  of  extending 
the  operation  of  democratic  principles. 

Democracy,  when  the  mass  of  a  people  is  in- 
experienced and  short-sighted,  necessarily  means 
blundering  of  a  serious  kind.  But  just  as  it  is 
vain,  if  the  beginner  wishes  ever  to  know  how  to 
swim,  to  keep  away  from  the  water,  through  fear 
of  drowning,  until  the  art  of  swimming  is  learned, 
so  it  is  with  self-government.  We  learn  through 
our  own  errors.  And  if  the  subject  races  are 
never  given  the  opportunity  of  making  blunders, 
they  will  never  acquire  the  capacity  to  avoid  them 
or  remedy  them.  This  is  by  no  means  the  least 
insistent  of  governmental  difficulties  in  connection 
with  the  municipalities,  the  universities,  and  the 
social  reform  associations  of  India. 

It  is  not  easy  for  the  members  of  a  well-ordered 
empire,  citizens,  such  as  we,  of  no  mean  state,  to 
enter  into  the  feelings  of  those  who  are  com- 
pulsorily  benefited  by  being  brought  within  its 
sphere  of  influence.  The  benefits  are  so  obvious. 
Peace,  security  of  property  and  person,  an  equal 
share  in  the  most  perfect  of  constitutional  machines 
— these  we  offer  at  the  price  of  the  recipients  bear- 


126         WHITE    MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

ing  no  greater  share  of  imperial  burdens  than  we 
bear  ourselves;  and  we  find  it  strange  that  no  alien 
people  accepts  our  protection  graciously  or  grate- 
fully. We  rescue  an  Egypt  from  military  misrule, 
or  a  South  African  Republic  from  government  by 
corruption,  and  wonder  at  the  discontent  which 
invariably  follows.  What  we  give  seems  so  much 
better  than  what  we  take.  We  are  so  slightly 
political  in  our  tastes  that  we  imagine  we  should 
be  quite  content  to  carry  on  all  our  business  under 
alien  rule  if  only  the  alien  rule  were  equally 
efficient  with  our  own.  We  forget  that  efficiency 
in  administration  is  relative  to  the  wishes  of  the 
governed  as  well  as  to  those  of  the  governors, 
and  that  our  rule  is,  in  our  own  lands  at  any 
rate,  reasonably  efficient  because  it  is  seldom 
galling,  and  that  it  is  seldom  galling  because 
those  that  obey  are  also  those  who  command. 
Were  the  same  fashion  of  administration  applied 
to  ourselves  in  the  same  manner  as  now,  only 
from  without  (by  alien  rulers),  we  imagine  that 
we  should  be  content  to  accept  it.  But  the 
imaginary  rulers  who  could  impose  an  English 
form  of  government  and  maintain  it  in  the  Eng- 
lish fashion,  would  not  be  aliens  except  in  name. 
They  would  be  indistinguishable  from  English- 
men. And  our  own  form  of  administration, 
though  seemingly  the  best,  may  well  (despite  all 
expectation)  prove,  if  imposed  on  other  peoples, 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  127 

distinctly  galling,  and  therefore  inefficient ;  just 
as  English  parliamentary  institutions  are  a  gro- 
tesque failure  when  clumsily  adopted  by  people  of 
different  hereditary  training. 

We,  the  strong,  give ;  but  we  also  take  away. 
The  very  necessity  of  acknowledging  the  white 
ruler's  superiority  in  some  points  involves  in 
itself  a  loss  of  dignity  and  self-respect.  A  people 
grows  in  manhood  by  the  slow  and  often  bung- 
ling development,  from  within,  of  an  imperfect 
system  of  citizenship  better  than  by  unwilling 
submission  to  an  abstractly  superior  system 
forcibly  imposed  from  without.  As  Mr.  Hobson 
puts  it,  "  in  the  progress  of  humanity,  the  ser- 
vices of  nationality,  as  a  means  of  education  and 
self-development,  will  be  recognised  as  of  such 
supreme  importance  that  nothing  short  of  direct 
physical  necessity  in  self-defence  can  justify  the 
extinction  of  a  nation.  In  a  word,  it  will  be 
recognised  that  ( le  grand  crime  international  est 
de  detruire  une  nationalite.'"1 

The  average  Englishman  believes  that  he  has 
no  wish  to  meddle  in  politics — except  to  prevent 
the  vexatious  meddling  of  others  with  his  private 
business.  The  average  English  government  is 
equally  convinced  that  it  does  its  best  to  avoid 
meddling  with  the  institutions  of  other  peoples — 
except  when  forced  to  do  so  in  order  to  prevent 

1  Mr.  J.  A.  Hobson,  Imperialism,  pp.  247-8. 


128         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

the  annoying  interference  of  brigands  or  black- 
mailers with  the  "  legitimate  "  course  of  trade; 
the  word  " legitimate"  here  meaning  "  compatible 
with  English  ideas  of  what  will  work  out  best  on 
the  whole."  Yet  we  find  in  Egypt  an  oppressed 
nation,  recently  freed  from  the  control  of  a 
government  of  extortioners,  rallying  to  the  call 
of  a  pro-Turkey  party.  What  does  it  all  mean  ? 
It  is  best  frankly  to  admit  that  we  cannot  under- 
stand. We  would  fain  fall  back  on  that  blessed 
word  "  fanaticism."  But  fanaticism  will  hardly 
serve  as  a  sufficient  explanation  always  and  every- 
where. When  an  Englishman  reads,  for  instance, 
that  magnificent  account  of  Roman  history,  which 
we  owe  to  the  German  Mommsen,  he  may  enter 
with  sympathy  into  the  glowing  panegyric  of  the 
Bismarckian  efficiency  of  Cassar's  work,  but  he 
is  likely  only  to  be  bewildered  by  the  author's 
tone  when,  in  dealing  with  the  earlier  pacifica- 
tion of  the  wilder  regions  of  Spain,  he  writes  with 
something  like  wistful  regret  of  the  extinction  of 
inchoate  nationalities.  Such  resistances  are  not 
cases  of  fanaticism,  any  more  than  is  the  his- 
torian's sympathy  with  them ;  and  no  more  than 
the  historian's  sympathy  need  they  be  due  to 
ignorance.  The  conquered  people  may  know 
the  conquerors  better  than  the  conquerors  know 
themselves. 
All  this  we  English  may  humbly  admit.  We 


POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS  129 

cannot  fathom  the  minds  of  alien  folk,  and  we  do 
much  mischief  through  our  failure.  But  shall  we 
therefore  hold  our  hands? 

The  complexity  of  the  problem  lies  in  there 
being  so  many  alien  interests  to  be  considered, 
besides  our  own.  Those  of  which  we  hear  most, 
the  articulate  interests,  are  likely  to  be  the  in- 
terests of  the  warrior  classes,  and  the  priestly  and 
governing  classes.  For  these,  with  few  excep- 
tions, we  certainly  make  life  less  interesting.  But 
the  inarticulate  interests — the  security  of  life  and 
property  which  we  give  to  a  laborious  peasantry, 
the  escape  from  evil  customs  like  sati  which  we 
bring  to  special  classes  here  and  there — are  these 
to  go  for  nothing?  Surely  not.  As  Carlyle  says, 
"  to  subdue  mutiny,  discord,  widespread  despair, 
by  manfulness,  justice,  mercy  and  wisdom,  to  let 
light  on  chaos,  and  make  it  instead  a  green  flowery 
world  is  great  beyond  all  other  greatness,  work 
for  a  God  !"  But  yet — but  yet — if  we  once  admit 
the  justifiability  of  such  interferences,  where  are 
we  to  stop  ? 

We  would  fain  leave  evil  institutions  (such  as 
those  attendant  on  the  Indian  caste  system)  to 
right  themselves  in  time,  without  our  consciously 
exerted  interference.  But  when  the  members  of  a 
distressed  caste  of  the  mountain  villages  present 
to  government  a  pitiable  petition,  setting  forth 
how,  after  having  always  been  forbidden  to  speak 


130         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN  ASIA 

except  when  spoken  to  by  villagers  higher  in  the 
social  scale,  or  to  draw  water  from  the  village 
wells  until  all  the  others  have  sufficient,  they  are 
beginning  now  to  learn  that  not  only  do  their 
shadows  cast  pollution  on  their  superiors,  but 
even  the  sound  of  their  voices  may  bring  harm,  so 
that  silence  in  public  is  henceforth  sternly  enjoined 
on  them,  and  they  are  forbidden  to  take  of  the 
village  well  the  water  they  need,  except  on  speci- 
fied days — what  then  shall  our  policy  be?  The 
hardships  of  their  lot  grow  heavier  and  heavier. 
Have  they  not  a  right  to  cry  out  indignantly — 
"  How  long,  you  English  !  How  long  will  it  be 
before  you  intervene?" 

There  is  no  simple  rule  by  which  we  may  decide. 
Intervention  is  here  helpful,  and  there  harmful. 
We  must  go  forward,  holding  as  patiently  as  may 
be  to  a  policy  of  maintaining  intact  all  such  native 
institutions  as  seem  to  make  in  favour  of  the 
higher  interests  of  the  people,  hesitating  always 
to  destroy  what  is  not  irretrievably  baneful,  and 
desirous  always  of  stimulating  growth  from  within 
rather  than  of  superseding  inferiorities  by  ready- 
made  superiorities  from  without. 

The  gentler  attitude  of  kindly  tolerance  will 
often  be  misunderstood  for  weakness,  and  will  be 
likely  therefore  to  create  many  of  the  evils  which 
attend  on  real  weakness — evils,  however,  which 
though  exasperating  while  they  last  are  but  of 


POLITICAL  CONSIDERATIONS  131 

temporary  importance.  These  temporary  diffi- 
culties are  those  that  strike  most  forcibly  the  per- 
ceptions of  the  average  unimaginative  imperialist, 
who  sighs  under  the  regime  of  a  soft-hearted 
government  for  rulers  who  will  dare  to  strike 
forcibly  and  frequently.  There  is  gain,  however, 
to  the  subject  peoples  in  the  methods  of  rulers  of 
either  type.  And  possibly  herein — in  the  alterna- 
tion of  two  sets  of  governors,  one  inclined  to 
favour  immediate  effectiveness  even  at  the  cost  of 
some  little  harshness  in  dealing  with  offenders, 
the  other  readier  to  risk  passing  annoyances  for 
the  sake  of  the  wider  gain  which  may  come  from 
treating  the  childish  races  as  having  advanced 
further  than  is  at  the  moment  the  case — the 
dependent  proteges  of  England  may  benefit  more 
than  they  would  under  an  unvarying  system  look- 
ing to  one  only  of  the  two  forms  of  advantage,  the 
immediate,  administrative  gain,  or  the  permanent 
educative  gain. 

But  none  the  less  will  it  be  necessary  to  avoid 
the  error  of  extending  over-hastily  to  our  adminis- 
tration of  semi-savage  dependencies  the  principles 
of  our  earlier  nineteenth-century  liberalism,  and 
especially  the  ideal  of  minimum  governmental 
interference  with  personal  liberty.1  Such  prin- 

1  The  suffering  due  to  our  non-interference  with  the  Indian 
sowcars  may  be  taken  as  an  instance.  On  high  economic  grounds 
money-lending  should  be  of  all  trades  the  freest  from  govern- 


132         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

ciples  of  a  mature  political  life  are  for  the  nations 
that  have  undergone  a  long  and  severe  training. 
They  are  not  for  the  use  of  children  or  of  childish 
races.  Our  political  system  is  established  on  a 
basis  of  centuries  of  orderly  development,  through- 
out which  the  building  up  of  laws  suited  to  the 
lives  we  propose  to  lead,  and  the  building  up  of 
characters  adapted  to  utilise  those  laws,  have 
proceeded  part  passu. 

The  security  which  we  create  for  the  wilder 
races  against  the  horrors  of  massacre,  or  the 
sufferings  that  follow  on  flood  and  drouth,  does 
not  create  an  environment  for  which  the  savage's 
hereditary  training  has  fitted  him,  nor  does  it 
change  his  nature  in  a  moment  so  that  he  may 
welcome  whole-heartedly  the  gifts  we  bring.  Our 
presence  deprives  him  of  his  most  serious  duty  in 
life — the  protection  of  his  womenfolk  and  children 
from  hostile  attack.  That  occupation  gone,  the 
African  native  must  inevitably  tend  to  retrograde, 
unless  some  imperative  incentive  to  labour  takes 
its  place ;  and  if  traditional  views  of  social  duty 
have  taught  him  to  consider  such  work  as  agricul- 

mental  restrictions,  and  interest,  like  other  prices,  should  adjust 
itself  in  the  ordinary  way  to  supply  and  demand.  But  when  the 
peasant  borrowers  are  as  children  who  -must  satisfy  the  traditional 
claims  of  customary  expenditure  on  marriage  feasts  and  funerals, 
regardless  of  future  consequences,  and  their  arithmetical  powers 
are  too  slight  to  enable  them  to  understand  the  meaning  of  a 
high  monthly  rate  of  interest,  the  economic  theories  of  the 
European  have  to  be  thrust  on  one  side. 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  133 

ture  to  be  the  task  assigned  by  nature  to  woman- 
kind (much  as  household  management  is  regarded 
in  Europe),  the  strong  arm  of  the  civilising 
conquerors  will  seem  to  have  dealt  harshly  with 
him  indeed ;  bringing  (as  it  must),  among  other 
consequences,  that  "  discouragement  which  works 
like  poison  in  the  veins  of  a  race  that  finds  its 
occupation  gone."1 

We  have  changed  for  the  native  the  line  of 
natural  development,  turning  him  aside  from  old 
into  new  paths,  which  he  is  little  likely,  unaided 
and  uncontrolled,  to  tread  without  stumbling.  In- 
tervention will  therefore  be  more  frequently  desir- 
able than  an  armchair  liberalism  will  readily  admit. 
But  only  experience,  illuminated  by  sympathy, 
can  suggest  (and  that,  too,  very  doubtfully)  the 
extent  or  the  character  of  the  intervention,  which, 
in  the  long  run,  may  be  expected  to  be  beneficial. 

§  28.  Those,  however,  who  admit  the  general 
truth  of  all  this  as  regards  matters  political  may 
yet  doubt  whether  there  is  anything  analogous  in 
the  policy  which  ought  to  be  followed  in  the 
higher  spheres  of  international  contact,  in  morals, 
that  is,  and  religion.  Yet,  almost  unquestionably, 
there  is.  It  is  better  to  seek  for  the  germs  of  a 
higher  view  of  life  in  tribal  customs  and  tribal 
religions,  and  to  bring  about,  as  far  as  may  be, 
the  development  of  those  germs,  than  to  destroy 

1  Mr.  Gilbert  Murray,  Liberalism  and  the  Empire,  p.  152. 


134         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK   IN   ASIA 

utterly  the  old  before  adding  the  new.  We  must 
imitate  the  tact  of  St.  Paul  at  Athens,  and  be  glad 
when  we  can  drive  home  our  points  by  happy 
quotation  from  recognised  authority — "as  certain 
also  of  your  own  poets  have  said  " — or  by  sym- 
pathetic allusion  to  existing  religious  dogma  and 
practice  and  to  felt  spiritual  needs.  Nothing  is 
gained  by  contemptuous  treatment  of  the  less 
perfect  attempts  of  pupil  races  to  express  spiritual 
aspirations  or  codify  spiritual  requirements.  Little 
progress  of  any  kind  can  be  made  by  those  "whom 
we  might  call  fanatical  missionaries " — I  quote 
from  Captain  Younghusband,  on  the  whole  a  very 
friendly  critic  of  missions — "who  imagine  that 
the  Christian  religion,  with  all  the  doubtful 
doctrines  which  have  been  hung  on  to  it — as  such 
doctrines  do  hang  on  to  religions  of  every  type,  as 
time  goes  on — is  all  right,  and  that  every  other 
religion  is  all  wrong.  In  uncompromising  lan- 
guage they  denounce  the  religion  which  differs 
from  their  own,  and  all  that  is  connected  with  it. 
They  tell  men  who  have  been  brought  up  from 
childhood  in  it — and  whose  fathers,  for  hundreds 
and  perhaps  thousands  of  years  before  them,  have 
believed  the  truth  of  it — that  they  are  to  be  damned 
eternally  ;  that  all  they  believe  is  wrong  ;  and  that 
unless  they  can  believe  in  doctrinal  Christianity 
they  will  not  be  saved."1  The  wisest  of  our 

1  The  Heart  of  a  Continent^  p.  307. 


POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS  135 

modern  missionaries  have  learned  this  already.  It 
is  better,  says  one  of  the  most  sagacious  and  far- 
sighted  of  these,  in  a  book  which  deserves  careful 
reading,1  to  deal  largely  in  comparatives,  to  claim 
a  fuller  insight  into  God's  dealings  with  man,  a 
higher  satisfaction  to  be  found  in  the  Christian 
than  in  the  non-Christian  life,  a  greater  hope  in  a 
more  trustworthy  creed.  The  missionary  should 
avoid  as  far  as  may  be  the  practice  of  treating  his 
work  as  something  absolutely  fresh  and  without 
parallel  in  his  congregation's  experience.  Rather 
he  should  be  glad  to  dwell  upon  that  aspect  of 
Christianity  in  which  it  appears  as  the  full  blossom 
springing  forth  on  the  tree  that  was  there  from  the 
beginning ;  and  should  emphasise  the  ennobling 
teaching  which  tells  of  the  Logos  as  the  light  that 
lighteth  every  man  coming  into  the  world  ;  for 
this,  rather  than  the  crude  dwelling  on  ideas  of  sin 
and  condemnation,  human  failure  and  the  wrath  of 
God,  while  equally  of  the  essence  of  the  gospel, 
is  more  than  equally  fitted  by  its  suggestions  of 
sympathy,  and  of  the  respect  that  builds  up  self- 
respect,  to  win  the  assent  of  those  who  would 
reject  an  ostentatiously  alien  gospel. 

The  religion  of  the  West  is  no  tribal  religion, 
casting  aspersions  on  the  less  perfect  conceptions 
that  other  races  have  framed  of  man's  place  in 
God's  world.  It  no  longer  looks  on  Islam  or 

1  Dr.  Hume — Missions  from  the  Modern  View. 


136         WHITE   MAN'S   WORK    IN   ASIA 

Taoism,  Buddhism  or  Zoroastrianism,  as  hostile 
forces,  but  rather  as  weak  allies,  co-operating  with 
itself,  however  feebly,  in  the  uplifting  of  humanity. 
We  seek,  indeed,  to  supersede  these  imperfect 
expressions  of  religious  aspiration  where  and 
when  we  can.  But  we  do  so,  confident  that  in 
Christianity  we  have  better  gifts  to  offer  than  any- 
thing that  the  East  can  show,  and  that  in  taking 
away  the  Oriental's  faith  in  baser  creeds  we  shall 
not  in  the  end  impoverish  but  rather  enrich.  For 
we  come  to  replace  the  worse  by  the  better,  the 
narrower  by  the  broader  view  of  life ;  bringing  a 
purer  joy  in  life  and  a  richer  hope,  a  faith  that  will 
help  more  than  hinder,  and  a  life  more  strenuous, 
more  exalted,  and  more  abundant  in  good  than  our 
less  imaginative  fellow-beings  have  yet  had  the  in- 
sight or  the  courage  to  dream. 


PLYMOUTH 
W.  BRENDON  AND  SON,   LIMITED,   PRINTERS 


OGT    3 


14  DAY  USE 

TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 


LD2lA-40nv-3,'72 
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